Sometimes, when she couldn’t sleep,
My grandmother would walk down the hall
To the little room with the crooked wall
Where Granddaddy slept, wake him,
And they would go downstairs to the kitchen
So he could brush her hair.
They turned down the heat at night
So every shiny surface glittered with cold
And with the blue-white light of the fluorescent rings
That hung like miniature rings of Saturn over the kitchen table
And, it never failed they said,
That, in the pasture across the road, one cow, still awake
And seeing the beacon the kitchen window held,
Would get up from her flattened grass
And walk down the hill to the fence, believing
That corn was coming in the big bucket
Carried by the man with his coat buttoned high,
His hands in heavy work gloves
Pouring the kernels into the trough
Like so much hard rain,
And, the other cows, waking
And seeing the first, would get up,
Would amble down the hill to join their sister
Until seven stood at the fence, waiting,
Dark form jostling dark form.
I don’t know how long
The cattle waited before giving up
And returning to their frozen
Beds, just that something about hope and love
Refuses denial and presses us on
Like the creek at the bottom of the hill,
That every night tells the story
Of the man-in-the-moon
Who fell in love with
The nymph-of-the-water
But could only watch
As her body shimmered and curved
Over the silver rocks
And then became one
With the dark.

© by Sherry Beasley. 
Used with the author’s permission.