Bloodroot
Photographs, fragile as Dead Sea scrolls,
hold two of you, dead before my birth,
stiff in sienna spring, serious as scabbards
on south Missouri farm.
Rosie: wind-hard in rock-scrubbed black dress,
stooped with thirteen children, steel-haloed glasses
glinting plum sun, aureole sun-gravured face,
dried apple forehead skewered with string.
Abraham: family myth namesake squinting beyond
musk ox moustache, blanched brow, measuring
Etruscan manhood, those pale stone radish seeds
sown years ago, the calloused hard-silk lover's hands
swinging slowly at your sides, butchered hogs
sashaying trees.
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