Cave Woman

Long time lonesome,
up here—like the world’s end, betimes—
watching, waiting for nothing
to change. Nobody to talk at
but wind and trees.

Early morning tells
a story—like milk and honey
from God’s own pitcher,
dripped across the clean blue cloth
He laid out for sky.

No man, no babies
here—just a springhouse
and a grave-house, lost
beneath wild grape tangles.
Don’t matter where.

This cold stone floor,
these coal-streaked, rocky walls,
rest me easy, help me
disremember times with
beams and puncheon.

Nola’d be the age
I was then, now, and woman-growed;
little Jubey—man enough to help
his pa a full day’s toil amongst
the rows of corn.

There’s none but me
to wonder how damp green wood
(in a slow oven, under beans)
caught like it was powder-dry and took
the chimney with it.

Folks tell that place
as haunted—nothing but a
growed-up, house-shaped charred spot
marks where nobody don’t know
our name no more.

I hide myself
down deep—fire can’t follow—
as daylight burns itself to
gray-gold ash against a grate
of pines and hills.

Store-bought sugar stars,
sprinkled on a bolt of night,
draw me, creeping quiet-like, to
where I sit, remembering, how it felt to be alive.

Jean Sexton