She read this on that morning
when it seemed the lines for sinners was a gust
that furrowed skyward from the ochre soil
and lined the side roads,
their cuffs of hermaphroditic rushes
which appeared as though they should waver there,
and nothing more,
buoyant and eager but undeciding, either for
bruised hematite rust and respite
or ripeness and love so deliberate and firm
as a plum brimming between the fingers,
or the redolence of peach
humming amid the smallest hairs of the ears,
as real as the burnished spirit that
strides again into her small, untangled body
and converts it to flowing brows of grain.