Eighty-two thousand
four hundred twelve words
in the fourth revision: 

a scorched Midwest landscape
imagined, written, edited, rewritten,
and then, like a barn riddled
with rotten beams, abandoned.

Young Luna left alone
poised at the gate left ajar—   

Rising action swirls in my memory
like shingles in a tornado;  
falling action settles thick on barren fields
edged with hardscrabble hangers on

honeysuckle, chokecherry,
plastic debris, tiny rodents, ants,
beetles, skinny scavengers
a few lizards eke life

from exhausted soil I once seeded
with hopes, watered with gentle feedback,
plot raked up stone by stone, pulled apart

fortified with better dialogue
and still

lost to drought, after all that.

Even now, I think of Luna, at that gate.

Sometimes as I walk (all these years later)
a hawk circles above, broad-winged cruciform
shadow dogging my path,
like a dark angel
watching for breath in the stillness.