Season of Peonies
The day before you left had been our best
in months, as if the spring had finally thawed
the two of us. The peonies you planted
round the porch steps were in bloom, the heads
so heavy that we had to stake them up
to keep them off the ground. We made a tin
of grapenut ice cream for the festival,
ran the three-legged race and almost won.
The bailer twine they knotted on our legs
cinched up so tight I had to cut it with
my pocketknife. You were all giggles with
my cousin’s wife, my mom, some girls from church.
That night we had the spring’s first thunderstorm
and when the rain was rapping on the roof
you touched my back then drew me in to you.
Next day when I got back from fixing fence
the car was gone, the red Ranchero we
had bought brand new the day I was discharged.
Do you remember that, old friend?
We said
our vows before the chaplain at the base,
drove to Daytona Beach to honeymoon.
You...such a Florida girl, suntan and smile,
bikini, shades when we went to the beach.
I talked about the farms nonstop, the fields,
fall leaves, spring calves — I painted quite the scene.
You found a Whole Earth Catalog and said
you couldn’t wait to get “back to the land”:
homegrown tomatoes, herbs, a chicken coop.
You must have planned a dozen flower beds.
Your mother was a nasty drunk, you said,
and claimed no family to amount to much,
so I went on about my own and how
we lived between the properties, the one
my uncle left to me, now ours, the other
over the hill my dad and brother farmed.
I set us all around the Christmas tree,
Thanksgiving table with the pumpkin pie,
my mother reaching out to squeeze your hand,
belonging, joy, and maybe soon a child.
I saw the disappointment in your face
before we crossed the Mason-Dixon Line.
I knew your smile to be an act of will.
When we pulled up the lane you leaned your head
against the dash and cried. I looked around
and tried to see it through your eyes — cow shit,
the house in need of paint, the whitetail bones
dogs scattered in the yard, mud everywhere.
You gagged when we first stepped inside the barn
and by November wouldn’t enter it.
You didn’t leave our room when it was time
for butchering, not even when my mother
begged outside the door. I never felt
how colorless the fall can be — all gray.
I never thought about the bloodiness.
The day you left I drank up on the hill.
Later that night my dad came by. He heard
the cattle moan, their bags about to burst,
mastitis flaring up in some already.
Fred rode along with dad and was the one
who found me face down in my puddled vomit.
He will be twenty-one this coming June,
dead set on farming even with milk prices
sunk so low. My bachelor uncle left
this place to me. I’ll do the same for him.
Today he brought his Polaroid and took
these pictures of the peonies for me.
The blooms are bigger than a baby’s head.
One farm life dream of ours at least took root.
You sent that photo in a card last Christmas.
I didn’t know that you’re in California
now — down by the seashore once again,
two smiling suntanned boys. Another man.
I didn’t feel the way I thought I might,
no bitterness or jealousy. Enough
time’s passed for that to burn away, I guess.
I’m sending you these pictures in return.
I don’t begrudge you finding happiness.
The life I planned for us I lived myself.
You left a hole in it, for sure, but not
one that you ever really fit inside.
It seems maybe you fit this other life.
Steven Knepper is Bruce C. Gottwald, Jr. ’81 Chair for Academic Excellence at Virginia Military Institute and the editor of New Verse Review: A Journal of Lyric and Narrative Poetry. He recently won the Poetry Society of Virginia’s sonnet contest, and his poems have been published in many journals, including First Things, Modern Age, Presence, Alabama Literary Review, The Brazen Head, and Pembroke Magazine.
Pulsebeat Poetry Journal 