Through all
          the little stories
heard
as emulsive-minded children
          on rickety and wrinkled knees,
we soaked them in
          but never developed,
stayed unlit, stayed negative;
and Maggie,
ghosting darkly
          on the edge of my inheritance.
The vibrating shadowness through
hazy days
          and hardwood;
The mute gazes of dairy cows.
An iron roof
          ticking in night's tightest grip,
blacking out the stars.
Its disapproving voice
          a ground back constant,
The consonant bird calls,
the thin newsprint
          that papered the walls.
Hazy days
          and deepslept nights,
          ringbarked hardwood.
Cowhides tanning
                    on the clothesline,
wraith-like.
Maggie,
          slippery through the dappled light
          as she
          whitewashed walls
in the roofless property chapel.
Hazy days
          and a housekept homestead,
and their
heat-fraught,
gin-and-tonic days.
          The highcollared women
          bickering more bitterly
                    for their hardwood silence
the minuteness of their territory,
          the crumbs of a housekeeping budget,
swept like saltbread fragments from a bar.
Cicada song
          like a tuneless madness
buzzing ineffectual
          and restlessness
and migranes.
That tethered energy
          and flyblown efficiency
                    turned to
corroding each other
                    a frustrated daughter
                    running away
                              along the rusty trainlines
so many years
          and mended stockings later.
                    Thrumming through it all,
Maggie watches, barely seen.
Her hazy gaze
          hardening into cataracts and rheumatism,
and ghosting darkly
on the edge of our inheritance.