The breath of grown-ups fermented with things unsaid
The World Was Old When We Got Here

we could see that, easy. Paint and birch
bark curling, dried up wells and leaky
faucets, weeping willows and bent windmills
shrieking in the breeze. Driven outside, we swung
our legs from the seats of rusted tractors tangled
in dead branches, crept into abandoned
houses graffitied by trees. We wove sticks
with bale twine to make shelters, fished
the hood of a car from the river
for a roof, used bricks from the crumbled
cookhouse for a makeshift wall.

Inheriting ruins,
we made ruins.

Blue jeans in the wash still came out dirty. The breath
of grown-ups fermented with things unsaid. Someday
we’d understand "farm crisis," foreclosure, FDIC. We’d see
people driving Cadillacs, rest our faces on the plush
white carpet of our own remodeled homes, remember
clover by the chicken pen, how each spring we rolled
in it, each spring it was new.


by Kara McKeever (atrasts Goodreads.com)