She follows ghost ruts of extinct wagon roads,
finds her husband, her mother, her baby.
They make their way single file
along the night trails of her memory.
Bent to the ground with age,
with the death of everyone she knows,
she walks slowly over the pasture.
Near a stand of oaks
through vein work of branches,
the sky sends signals to her eyes.
In a field wrapped by barbed wire
where death perches on fence posts
she goes down on her knees,
with the wild mustard and gopher holes.
The snake tenses its muscles
as she waits,
on the other side of cold grass.