The frost line’s not descended yet
into Minnesota’s desolate plain
ponded with rice, planted in flax;
but the earth makes the plough stutter
over syllables of stubble.  The season’s
last beets, purple with sugar,
shoulder to shoulder, tremble in bins
like unsaid words, loaded on haulers
whose diesel engines grunt
then settle back in silence.

Dusk falls, a time for going home.
I drive my rented sedan into town,
past an oversized northern pike
guarding Erskine proper, past the graveyard
tilled for morning.  Tomorrow my dad completes
his journey, returns.  Tonight his casket
is flanked by mums in urns.  The wakeful gather
at the mortuary; aging farmers pass coffee cups
and kind words; the pastor interrupts
with a sermon, says we’re ants before God.

Some words are said, some kept,
some hauled across the Dakotas in sacks.
One door opens, another closes.
The mortician sneaks outside to smoke,
my dad’s spirit on his heels.
He didn’t particularly like mums
or sermons, but always wanted to share
the silence of stars with someone when,
power outage or sunset,
the light completely failed.