The Waning Hours
              (for Sadie, who makes
               it worthwhile)

by Kristin Roedell


You have the record
the earth keeps. As you
lift a leg beside the fence,
I learn the empty highway
is trafficked at night by
wind, and the garbage
truck comes before dawn.

The corner by the fence
is where the cat killed
the white ferret--
you know these things
surely as horses know
a pocket apple.
Here my daughter’s slide
scratched the Japanese
maple, there the guinea pig 
in her shoebox passed
into the ground.

You can sense my age
under my battered raincoat,
but I could teach you things:
how to sense that youth
is leaving, the way a child
leans away.

There would still be more
of interest in the wet
gravel, for both of us.
Like the curtain on a song
bird’s cage, you bring me
up in the hours belonging
to young mothers. It is
an unexpected blooming.


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Kristin Roedell's website is at: http://kristinroedell.wikidot.com/