Back Forty

Back Forty

She knew these fields before her own name,
fence posts sunk by hands she never met.
Her chest carried ancestral memories.
The quiet pride. The habit of return.

Wind shaped her prayers as it whipped
through her tight blonde curls year after year.
Snow came in sheets, then silence, then thaw.
She learned the land by walking it with closed eyes,
each furrowed ridge a sentence in the soil.

One winter, after Christmas, after chores,
her father tied her favorite sled behind the blue truck
and pulled her to the back forty,
through the stubble and the hush
of soil turned icy silver in the moonlight.
The large red scarf her mother knitted
barely contained her giggles.

They hit a drift too soft.
A wheel sank deep.
He cursed and said he’d walk to the house
for chains and a shovel.
He left the truck running, heater on,
and told her not to worry, he’d return.

The windows fogged.
She waited in the hum.
Her breath made rings of frost on the glass.
She tried to trace her name but stopped midway,
not wanting to ruin the perfect crystals.

Now the wind has carried the color from her hair.
The parcels have sold one by one.
Fence lines did not hold.
A cousin’s house replaced the barn for a time,
then silence, then self-storage units.
The pastures are expended.

Some nights,
when starlings swarm,
she parks her car on the new road
that runs along the back forty.
Sitting on the warm hood,
looking into the distance,
she sees her father walking back to the truck,
through the frozen rows,
with a coil of chain in one hand,
and a shovel over his shoulder.
The quiet pride. The habit of return.

-nl
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