Roger D. Jones

Somewhere in Arkansas

Long after we moved, the house was burned down for insurance. The rain cistern was emptied, its metal hauled off for scrap. The weeping willow was dozed off and sawed up. The fences were taken down. Who knows what happened to the barn? – an empty space now. Some subsequent owner moved a small trashy frame house onto the lot. It sits unoccupied, windows broken, front door swung wide open. The small beech and silver-leafed trees in the back yard still stand. The grasses are tall, the weeds high. No sign of Dad's garden plot, or the fences that marked its boundaries. We always sensed, and talked about, a wildness we felt in the land. Now that wildness, it appears, has returned to reclaim it.

sober in the kitchen,
drunk when he reaches the front door
muscadine wine