We stand, she and I, scanning the empty
horizon, searching
for forgotten stumps and broken shafts.
Refugees from the fire,
spent lives of vines soon to burn down to ash.
Smoldering
"I don't remember hearing the train," mom says,
lifting a knarled root, adding its pregnant weight
to the pyre.
"You hear more in all this emptiness," I tell her.
Grunting with the labor of my task,
I pause to listen.
Shrill, insistent, penetrating,
heading north, though it's spring
and time for homecoming.
Working together in the late haze of afternoon
we come upon a slight brown root
ejecting itself from the earth.
"I got it," I say, clumping over to wrest it
from the sandy shards of soil that cling
tightly, covetous.
I begin digging, but she proves to be
dense and unmovable,
buried deeper than I thought.
My mother offers assistance,
slight hands encased in leather. Reaching,
she grasps the root at the head.
Together we worry the root, pushing and pulling,
back and forth, faces tight with concentration,
gasping with effort, intent on our labor.
Stooping, we turn the root
clockwise, counter,
hands gripping together
slowly uncorking her from the warm womb
of earth.
--Lea S., 44
