Homeplace by Jo McDougall

Awake while you sleep,

I tie and untie the strings

of what went wrong:

the farm auctioned, my father buried in Minnesota,

you and I alone

in a rented room.

I remember my father when I was six

pushing open a gate on the farm road,

stirring the dust of August.

The locusts sizzling in the grass,

a hum of dragonflies hanging sleepy above us.