A boy came by the house today,
he asked for food.
He couldn’t pay anything, but Ma set him down
and gave him biscuits
and milk.
He offered to work for his meal,
Ma sent him out to see Daddy.
The boy and Daddy came back late in the afternoon.
The boy walked two steps behind,
in Daddy’s dust.
He wasn’t more than sixteen.
Thin as a fence rail.
I wondered what
Livie Killian’s brother looked like now.
I wondered about Livie herself.
Daddy asked if the boy wanted a bath,
a haircut,
a change of clothes before he moved on.
The boy nodded.
I never heard him say more than “Yes, sir” or
“No, sir” or
“Much obliged.”
We watched him walk away
down the road,
in a pair of Daddy’s mended overalls,
his arms like reeds.
Ma rested her hands on her heavy stomach,
Daddy rested his chin on the top of my head.
“His mother is worrying about him,” Ma said.
“His mother is wishing her boy would come home.”
Lots of mothers wishing that these days,
while their sons walk to California,
where rain comes,
and the color green doesn’t seem like such a miracle,
and hope rises daily, like sap in a stem.
And I think, some day I’m going to walk there too,
through New Mexico and Arizona and Nevada.
Some day I’ll leave behind the wind, and the dust
and walk my way West
and make myself to home in that distant place
of green vines and promise.
July 1934