| Father kept the rows clean.
Watered from the well when sun denied rain. He let me play between the lettuce and tomato vines on a knoll in the center of things. One day I found a baby rabbit and made a crib from a shoe box. Too late, he told me, to love it now. When the orphan died, I buried it on the knoll in view of corn, green and gold. I adorned the grave with gray, brown castor beans someone had planted on the edge and Father saw no reason to uproot. He told me to wash my hands before dinner because he'd heard the beans grew from poison seeds. We prayed together at the kitchen table and ate the corn roasted. Carnivores scattered the grave beans and assailed the body. __Myrne Roe
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