I think by now it is time for the second cutting. <br /> I imagine the field, the one above the last <br /> <br />house we rented, has lain in convalescence <br /> long enough. The hawk has taken back the air <br /> <br />above new grass, and the doe again can hide <br /> her young. I can tell you now I crossed <br /> <br />that field, weeks before the first pass of the blade, <br /> through grass and briars, fog — the night itself <br /> <br />to my thighs, my skirt pulled up that high. <br /> I came to what had been our house and stood outside. <br /> <br />I saw her in it. She reminded me of me — <br /> with her hair black and long as mine had been — <br /> <br />as she moved in and then away from the sharp <br /> frame the window made of the darkness. <br /> <br />I confess that last house was the coldest <br /> I kept. In it, I became formless as fog, crossing <br /> <br />the walls, formless as your breath as it rose <br /> from your mouth to disappear in the air above you. <br /> <br />You see, aftermath is easier, opening <br /> again the wound along its numb scar; it is the sentence <br /> <br />spoken the second time — truer, perhaps, <br /> with the blunt edge of a practiced tongue.<br /><br />Claudia Emerson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/aftermath-46/
