Lila Wrote Her Own Obituary
The one-room schoolhouse where she first taught sits here among fields of soybeans and the almost-ripe winter wheat. Now and then a whirr breaks the silence—startled grasshoppers. Gravel crunches underfoot as we make our way south. A cloud of gnats floats over the slough. We hear a ker-splash—a fish, maybe, or a frog? Last night the Milky Way shone brightly and the memory of it—how it arced over the prairie—unearthed feelings of distance and absence. Lila and I don’t speak; we take in the hay fields, already mowed, hill after hill of sunflowers, the corn. When we return, I shall bring in the wash from the line while Lila prepares two glasses of iced tea, each with exactly one ice cube.
her lilies . . .
their prodigal blooming
year after year