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The old car is there,
where she left it,
out by the old shed,
breeding rust
obscured
from the roadway by the rye grass
that grows up all around.
Long triangular tentacles
blowing and bending
in the hot breeze, as
sunlight filters in
through gathering clouds.
By now the grass has worked
up into the engine block.
The car, was it an old
Chevrolet or Buick?
No matter, it's all
that is planted now,
in this fallow field,
awaiting bulldozers.
They call this grass
"poverty grain," and there's
no small comfort in the fact
that it's as tolerant
of poor soils
as she was of the poor soils
of her marriage.
On the day she left,
she packed her whole life
into an old grip: clothing,
a few framed photographs
of the children, her parents,
the salt cellar she'd bought
on her honeymoon in Rome.
While packing, she'd given
pause that her whole life
had become so neatly compact,
portable, where once there'd
been permanence. And now,
she blows and bends
with the rye grass
on a midsummer afternoon,
so far from home,
so far from the old shed
of her former self.
Scott Edward Anderson, © 1995