I thought of onions first: how she taught
me when the best ones would be in,
tuned, as she was, to the seasons’ rhythms;
how when we watched new piglets
with their tiny snouts, she confided
she’d cried when her first ones
returned cold from the abattoir,
but had toughened up since
and planned to teach children
about farming.
Then with money tight and those dreams
on hold, she followed her boyfriend
to his parents’ Welsh farm—
just five months ago,
and I befriended this gap-toothed butcher
now anxiously watching me
beside the eggs I had been checking,
because life goes on, except
on the dark side of risk and chance
with its landscape of brake-screams,
crazed lights, crunch.
My basket slipped down and I cried;
then drove home under an ordered sky.