Turquoise Circles

William Woolfitt

I drive four hundred miles to my grandparents’

Angus cattle farm near Nestorville, West Virginia.

And walk up the knob, zenith and center of meadows

they mowed, cow paths, rust-roofed sheds, silo,

shrinking pond. Once, I knew how to find may apple,

trillium, and jewelweed. A crow says caw caw caw.

Maybe my lost ones are reaching for me. I stand

on the knob, I think this is what it’s like to be alive

to wonder and dread. I try to bring them back.

For me, for my sons. I think of the burning planet

where we will live. Once, on the knob, Pa pointed

his hand and named the near counties, the rounded

lines of gray-green hills: maybe he said Limestone,

Laurel Mountain, Polecat, Pifer, the long folded

edge of the Alleghenies. Those hills pocked with

mine pits, ringing with the whistles of helper trains

that no longer run. Once, he sang I won’t need this

house no longer. That was before Applied Energy

built wind farms on Laurel: turbines, blinkers

flashing red warnings nightly. Before cow burps

were linked to greenhouse gas, glacial melt.

Before the coyotes came—eating anything

they can chew, the DNR says. Once, Pa baled hay,

strung barbed wire, dug out the crowns of multiflora

rose and burned the top vines, clipped bull calves.

What else did he say? I reach for him, grab a handful

of empty air. One night, my older boy and I visit

Grandma, who lives alone on the farm. I try to hold

this memory of her, ember I’ll warm in my hands.

She sits near a TV tray, plastic cup. She and the boy

kick a cloth ball, play keep-away. The boy draws

two big turquoise circles. These are dream ponds,

the boy says. They help you go to sleep. That night,

we dream in the pool of a moon-washed house.

There’s Angus cow in me, flat-spired snail,

night shark, jaguarundi, giant kelp, ground dove.

Our home is oil-spilled sea, the damaged air.