From Inheritance by Marydale Stewart

Inheritance

I am the daughter of a daughter
whose roots clenched land as far east
as this country goes--and
she of a woman who grew old
where the prairie began,
leasing her life span to
a series of banked fires and cold stoves
while we moved across the continent.

We moved in degrees of our lives, enchaining
the land in our own ways. We began where
the oldest tree-dark quiet paths lay
unclaimed, where our grandmothers
stepped in wonder and terror
off the ships from other lands.

Now a daughter of my daughter is a swaying
sunlit blur on the children's swing:
the California coast nurtures her in light.
And I, a daughter in between,
carry in my inner being
visions of shaded pines and
spongy golden duff
beneath my feet.

And so in my heart I retrace
the way we came,
how we sought the shadow of this
land's spine and moved beyond-
we the daughters-
to that bronzed, fragrant light where the sun
goes down on the New World and
where a child swings in the morning of her life.

Chance

Somewhere in southwestern Colorado,
where the San Juan mountains
flirt with New Mexico,
there is a place on the west bank
of the Piedra river,
where a path invented by deer
drifts under riverbank versions
of birch and spear-
leafed willow, where
it is sunny enough for wild rose,
blue monkshood, and penstemon
to grow there,
where in early July, cow parsnip
shoots high, ready to bloom.

True to its name,
the river has spread hospitable
stones for walking below the bank's
moist ledge. And in this place,
one dead willow stem
has dropped with perfect aim
to intersect two live, green
willow stems. On the dead stem rests
a tiny, untidy bird's nest,
smaller around
than the rim of a wineglass.

And I was there.

Benediction: On Kansas Land

A certain change: the atmosphere
is clear, cold at night. This relentless horizon
holds late afternoon light
and lets it lie trapped, bright,
on golden corn just across the road.
Blackbirds weigh the elms down,
clamoring. Then they're quiet.

A sudden rush of wings: They take flight,
and in a mass chandelle, they wheel and
pass aloft. Their shadows drop like leaves
askim in a turbulent wind, drift over me,
and disappear.
I stand still, like a penitent
blessed unexpectedly.
I think of this: It's autumn for me, too.
Of all the places
where I've loved and learned to live,
did I leave something of myself
in each, like a shadow passing-
like a leaf in wind--on
the land, a place I knew?

As I remember sunny sandstone
cliffs, sage-scented rain, my old homes
all lark-song-graced-
Benedicat hoc iste:
and may those spaces
hold some part of me
in a kind of memory.

In This Place

In her blanketed and pillowed plastic chair,
she leans crookedly toward me, blue eyes fixed
on her inner intent, to tell the truth. Her hands
are still graceful, long-fingered, even as her tremor
makes parody of gesture.

There are no mirrors in this place, she says.

Silently I say to her: But you are safe here.
They have good food.
You just had your hair done. And of course
there are mirrors. There's one right here.
But I do not say these things aloud. I wait.

In a moment, she explains: If they had mirrors
in this place, we would look in them and scream
in such pain that we would shatter and splinter
like the glass in the mirror and fall to the floor
because we are so shriveled and people would come along
and cut themselves on us there would be blood
everywhere and pieces of us all broken and ruined
scattered so far they would never find us again
they would be glad to be rid of us they are mean.
Would you want to be in a place like this?