Читать книгу Winnower - Aaron Brown - Страница 5

The woman bent to gather grain onto the woven straw,

piled the millet in the center, then elevated the shallow basket,

hovering it five feet above a cracked ground. Her parched hands

quivered to support before she let gravity draw the seed down,

down to a pan of purity. In the wind, the chaff wandered as I did along

the rutted road when I first saw her, the woman on the plain

with no hut or tent in sight. I longed to join her in sifting

memories, watching the refuse of bullets, lies, loss melt away—

to glean the ripeness of belonging: the steaming shai, the afternoons

conversing with friends of a past life, hard to distinguish in the haze

that swirled around her, enveloped her till she and all my visions disappeared.

If I will find her again, I must wander this road through a land

not fully mine but more of me than anywhere else.