I was three when Halleys passed
1986
I walked most of the way up the deep hollow
Past meadows following the creek
Over bridges
Winding up a gravel driveway
Around over or through the red cattle fence
Past the farmhouse frozen
in another time
With peach trees, lights still on, furnished. As if someone still lived there.
Theres quilts and sheets on the clothes wires sometimes, and baskets of apples left gathered nearby apple trees, a ladder, an antiquated street light always buzzed somewhere
Dad carries me some of the way,
it grew steeper as you pressed nearer
the top of the hill, ringed with many shapely cedars protecting an iron fenced graveyard.
The tops of all the other mountains stretch away from you here, and the wind blows differently,
wilder
The starry sky presses down
And owls hoot and
The whipoorwill and frogs
Sing songs my mother knew
I know I fell asleep after finding it in the telescope, and maybe I saw Saturn’s rings

Rachel was a musician
Her ashes are on her piano.
It’s mine now
She knew everything the bobcats knew,
The forest knew her as well
I saw things with her that only happened because the mountains were all used to her
She knew the habits of the stars, the birds,
and the other things that moved from Steven’s Cemetery to Haldeman
And music echoed off those hills
Your eyes adjust to the dark and you don’t use flashlights to make the journey home.