I wake up early while you sleep,
soft in that room whose walls
are pictures of blonde angels,
and set loose the fireflies.
Their lights
have flickered all night
on our eyelids.
Already you have a woman’s hip bones,
long muscles
you slide your dress over
and we brush each other’s hair
then step out into the blue morning.
Good daughters,
we are quiet
lifting empty milk cans,
silver cans into the wagon.
They rattle together
going to town.
We ride silent
because the old man has paid us
dimes not to speak
but the wheels of the wagon
sing and we listen,
we listen to ourselves singing
the silence of birds
and dust that flies up in our hair.
the place is dark
where we have disappeared.
Our family returns to us
in the bodies of children, of dogs
stretched across the road,
cats who ran away from home.
What do we have left
except the mirage of sound,
frogs creaking over the night land.
The black walnut trees are gone,
stolen during the night
and transformed
into the handles of guns.
That song, if you sing for it
and pray it to come,
in the distance
it grows nearer.
Close your eyes and it comes,
the music of old roads
we still travel together, so far
the sound is all that can find us.