by Kelly Madigan
She wishes
the income were even
and he wonders
why a bumper crop
doesn’t make her happy.
Green velvet pillows
and diamonds too big to wear
are carefully wrapped.
People will keep anything
to hand down, pay for years
of dry storage so these
Valuable Antiques
can be given to grandchildren.
But who will buy
this fall light,
the heavy bird tipping
the branch, the slice of apple?
Harvest kicks up dust
and I am in it, molecules
raised to the light, swirled up
with cornhusk and loess.
My finest hours
naked in the grass, turkey vultures
coasting the thermals above me,
the scented world drawn up close.
I ask to own nothing
but cannot halt the stream
of wrapped gifts. I step out of my shoes
and into the current,
my skirt rising up in the water.
Everything I am given
is folded into a paper boat
and dropped to the river.
Let the water
even everything. Yours is yours.
Mine is an offering. I gave away
the bag of rice, the baby blankets.
I gave away the dog, the house
in the country. I gave away
my blouse and locket. Not everything
floats. I kept a broom made from dark
grasses, and a cupped hand to drink from.
Take the rest. It is gone already.
When you are finally done looking
downstream at all that you have lost
turn yourself
and see what light is hitting the water
just slightly upstream from where you sit.
This is your inheritance.
Light on the surface of the water,
you with your legs crossed
and no longer drunk, singing a learned
hymn, freckled and beaming,
a child alive in the afternoon
and none of the tragedy held close.
Kelly Madigan has received an NEA fellowship in creative writing, and the Distinguished Artist Award in Literature from the Nebraska Arts Council. Her poetry collection, The Edge of Known Things, was published by SFASU press in 2013. Her work has appeared in 32 Poems, Prairie Schooner, Terrain.org, and Plant-Human Quarterly.