(c) Colleen Briggs 2018

Years Bending Into Time

hot
the night air
white
the hot light
dancing in distant moonlit fields
drowning in years of gathered emptying skies

pouring down our windowpane
drumming our whispers
into the restless drone of the fan
of still
musty
the dusty
presence of settling walls

of eyes in photos in every room
settling with walls on which they hang

eyes asleep
in fields drenched with sweat and toil
yet humming with songs of longing
years bending into time

arise oh walls!
for where they now stand
great the cloud of witnesses
unshackled by dust
unfettered by rain

hot
their blood pulsing through our veins
tender
their wisdom buried in these walls

The years are ever bending into time… My family returned to Kansas this past weekend for a memorial service in honor of my husband’s uncle, and I remembered this poem written in the early 2000’s and originally published in my blog in 2014. Although my husband’s family uprooted from Kansas decades ago and transplanted west to Colorado, it seems the people of Ada never forget their own. My husband’s great-grandparents homesteaded there and claimed fertile land as far as the eye can see from “The Big Hill” along the “Salt River.” We gathered at the Ada community center, and strangers spread a lavish feast for those attending the service. More strangers ferried family members in pickup trucks across fields and up the Big Hill to scatter ashes. The people of the tiny farming community of Ada testify to a kinder, gentler time. Grandpa’s house in nearby Minneapolis, KS, which inspired this poem, has long since been torn down; but the people of Ada affirm the witness still stands.

Me and my husband on “The Big Hill,” taken by my brother-in-law Doug Briggs.