David Axelrod

After Edward Hopper

Not this room unadorned, its spare light,
nor people caught up in a story
we can’t anymore deny our part in—

but this green wave of forty Aprils
since last we lived on outwash
plains below the Flathead Divide

swept us up today as we sowed fistfuls
of blue flax, fescue and brome,
the seed whose germ—today as forty years ago

—is a future with children,
but really who can say for sure,
the skin of our dwelling in this place so thin

it’s just this skift of rubble, misremembered
stories, islands in ice, receding
water, lichen, and moss,

before our granddaughter hears thunder
for the first time, throws back her head
and answers—

                         let waves of color,
water and sound be a meadow in her dream,
not human aloneness, but all that watches us in wonder 

streaming through wide-swung doors.