Every seventh day that winter,
he drove an old white van
covered with hand-lettered Bible verses
to a stretch of backroad
between two rattling cornfields,
under transmission towers that sizzled in the damp.
Wary of zealots,
I’d wait for him to leave
before taking my dog Reba to the fieldbreak.
When we walked down Silo Hill
toward Anna’s farmhouse,
his flowers lined the road, single-file.
He’d planted cut long-stemmed red roses
into frozen roadside dirt
where they, of course, died standing and rootless.
Next week, another section of roses materialized
beside their dying cousins
who were alongside those quite dead.
My curiosity and I knocked on Anna’s door,
sipped boiled black coffee with sugar
not too near the crackling pot-belly stove.
“Heaven knows!” laughed the old Mennonite.
“He’s said not a peep to us. He plants those roses,
waters them, prays to the four directions and goes.”
Then, the fresh roses stopped appearing. The van
gone, the small brown-skinned man gone,
the sign he hoped for, I suppose, a “no.”
But then, I suppose too much,
being spectator without a program
to explain this Play of Mysteries.
Lynda Gene Rymond has been runner up/finalist for Bucks County Pennsylvania Poet Laureate for the last four years. Her poems and stories have been published in numerous journals and her children’s books by Houghton Mifflin. She lives on Goblin Farm in Applebachsville, Haycock Township, with her husband, painter Charles Browning.
Poet’s Corner is curated by Bucks County Poet Laureate Tom Mallouk and supported by a grant to the Bucks County Herald Foundation made possible by Marv and Dee Ann Woodall.
Calling all poets: Poet’s Corner needs a poem for July 4. Please send your candidate to heraldpoetscorner@gmail.com.
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