It's Still Life

The Aftermath

My sister has a photograph,
a study in monochrome,
and it’s a story of not
what you actually see,
but what was once there.

An ox stood there once,
stood in prairie grass
that reached belly high,
and there was a red barn

for shelter, a farmhouse
filled busy with noise.
Orchards. Apples. Windfall.
Water drawn from the well.

But what you actually see
is a scrawled landscape.
Stone-dry. A tick’s scourge
with a clay chimney standing
like a lone arm stretched,

and an ox skull staring
with its eye socket frozen
toward a barren nowhere.
It’s a past buried
that refuses to die.

Soon to be published in The D’Verse 2016 Anthology. Written for dVerse “Drought” Photo is from the US National Archive on Flickr. No restrictions: CC0