Visible from Here

After the First Acres Sell 

I put down the phone and stare at nothing, 
everything of my farm past settled into a moment
like colors pushed back through a prism 
gone singular and clear: 
Hill farmland of my father’s and grandfather’s birth,
our mural childhoods . . . sold piecemeal. 
My brother’s long-distance 
grief, my own and my sisters’ cleaving 
to the native speech of stones; 
days coming back in a clamor of rock-picking; 
short growing seasons of heat 
and stream irrigation; the nearly dry creekbed, 
the faint om of cobbles coming through an ice trace.
Out my windows now, over Horse Heaven Hills 
from one white cloud 
roots of the lowering sun enlarge 
until colors like a whole brass chorus spread. 
I go out to stand antiqued in it. 
As light turns flushed, a fresco 
calicoes into being, bright and shadow flicker 
in cottonwoods like a second coming . . . 
            slumped farm buildings straighten and mend, 
            and rising along hill pasture: 
            the fluid forms of horses.