Beside a woman who perhaps was beautiful then

When prim and stoic were the necessary fashion,

Her black dress stiff and buttoned up to her chin;

Below a man whose eyes are still as hard-scrabble

And loveless as the life and place he had endured,

Another faded photograph of a field, indiscriminate

And bare, the dark ground edged here and there

By light that must have been sepia even then, and

By a split-rail fence, leaning at an angle that would

Have kept nothing in nor out, nor need to, to where

The field is slipping a little toward a river and then

Settling into it. 

                         There is no river bank nor landmark

To say where the man's land ended and the river began.

Perhaps he had been a long time away from this ground

And had returned a last time, not to pass it on then,

Having none who had love of it, but into the care of

The soft light and the water, the fence posts receding,

Sinking a little deeper each year, the river's risings

And fallings of each season's weather taking always

More of the field into flowing light and moving water.

I stand there a long time, one more shadow holding

Its ground, trying to hold on as it slowly slips away.