Thick with Conviction / Poems by Thomas Reynolds

Half

She sets down her glass,
still half full,
and looks out the window
down the fissure-like road.

In the pasture,
a cow stands in the pond
up to its flanks,
only a head and body above cattails.

The door is half open,
and as if suddenly cold
on a hot July afternoon,
she pushes it shut, then deadbolts it,

as if he doesn't have the key (or they),
the conflicting halves of her husband,
one need and apologetic, hearing her call him in,
and the violent paranoid who reaches the gate.

"I'm halfway home,"
he called from Kansas,
only miles from the exact center of the U.S.,
where one half meets the other.

That was yesterday,
and the day is halfway gone,
but not her fear, the aching dread
that lingers, waiting on quiet paths.

Is there even one half left
of the girl who loved the black quarter horse,
riding over the Flint Hills,
with freckles and easy laugh.

Or only the narrow portion
who spooked at blowing leaves along the creek,
expecting a copperhead
and hated who she was?

Which of his two selves
will climb from the semi truck cab,
sweep up the cracked steps
to take her in his rough hands?

The white porcelain horse she's clutching
smashes to the floor,
when the plume of dust
materializes above the far hill.

The truck, when it appears,
seems to hurtle above the grass,
only the top half visible,
slicing through the earth.

The Old Woman In The Hills

Some day I may be
more animal than human,
abandoning house and shed
to crawl on all fours
blind as a mole into the brush.

My husband lies
beneath the cottonwood.
The dark woods take back
the farm, inch by inch.
Fingers that once threaded needles
can't grip a spoon,
or reach above my head
to comb thinning hair.

But I only have to look
to the arm of this chair for inspiration,
the thin spider my elbow accidentally
crushed as I set down my book.
How after the initial blow
and desperately flailing limbs
it crawls to a safe position
beneath frayed flannel padding,
one bent leg slightly twitching
while it measures its injury.

Wind ruffles the flannel as afternoon
gives way to evening cool,
and minutes that seem like hours pass
before I see the first workable legs flare
to grip the worn oak of the rocker
and slowly pull the stiff body forward.