The Millworker’s Wife
We are a vow to an empty field, the field’s
dropseed dropping, the field hurt from sun,
the millstream stitching the evenings one
to the next, the wheel turning with it
to open every seam. Steady. This mill
is empty, its windows long since sealed
for the last time, hands ash that wrapped
around these boards. I have been counting
the birds left in the rafters, the light
sorting through the roof, and the stones in the river
keep stumbling past my reach. This song of fragments
opens, falters.