Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse Page A

than a five-pound sack of sugar,
    and a little cold from
    spending time on the north front steps,
    but Mrs. Bingham
    and the reverend
    warmed that baby with
    blankets and sugar water,
    and tender talk,
    and the whole of Joyce City came forward with gifts.
    I asked my father if we could adopt it,
    but he said
    we stood about as much chance
    of getting that baby
    as the wheat stood of growing,
    since we couldn’t give the baby anything
    not even a ma.
    Then he looked at me
    sorry as dust.
    And to make up for it,
    he pulled out a box with the rest of the clothes
    Ma had made for our new baby
    and told me to drop them by the church if I wanted.
    I found the dimes Ma’d been saving,
    my earnings from the piano,
    inside an envelope,
    in the box of baby Franklin’s nighties.
    She had kept those dimes to send me
    to Panhandle A and M.
    To study music.
    No point now.
    I sat at her piano a long time after I
    got back from the church,
    imagining
    a song for my little brother,
    buried in Ma’s arms on a knoll overlooking the
    banks of the Beaver,
    imagining a song for the Lindbergh baby
    stiff in the woods,
    imagining a song for this new baby
    who
    would not be my father’s son.
    May 1935

Old Bones
    Once
    dinosaurs roamed
    in Cimarron County.
    Bones
    showing
    in the green shale,
    ribs the size of plow blades,
    hip bones like crank phones,
    and legs running
    like fence rails
    down to a giant
    foot.
    A chill shoots up my spine
    imagining a dinosaur
    slogging out of an Oklahoma sea,
    with turtles swimming around its legs.
    I can see it sunning itself on the swampy banks,
    beyond it a forest of ferns.
    It’s almost easy to imagine,
    gazing out from our house
    at the dust-crushed fields,
    easy to imagine filling in all the emptiness with green,
    easy to imagine such a beast
    brushing an itchy rump against our barn.
    But all that remains of it
    is bone,
    broken and turned to stone,
    trapped in the hillside,
    this once-upon-a-time real-live dinosaur
    who lived,
    and fed,
    and roamed
    like a ridiculous
    long-necked cow,
    and then fell down and died.
    I think for a moment of Joe De La Flor
    herding brontosaurus instead of cattle
    and I
    smile.
    I tell my father,
    Let’s go to the site
    and watch the men chip away with ice picks,
    let’s see how they plaster the bones.
    Please, before they ship the whole thing to Norman.
    I am thinking
    that a dinosaur is getting out of Joyce City
    a hundred million years too late to
    appreciate the trip,
    and that I ought to get out before my own
    bones turn to stone.
    But I keep my thoughts to myself.
    My father thinks awhile,
    rubbing that spot on his neck.
    He looks out the window,
    out across the field,
    toward the knoll where Ma and the baby lie.
    “It’s best to let the dead rest,” he says.
And we stay home.
    June 1935



The Dream
    Piano, my silent
    mother,
    I can touch you,
    you are cool
    and smooth
    and willing
    to stay with me
    stay with me
    talk to me.
    Uncomplaining
    you accept
    the cover to your keys
    and still
    you
    make room
    for all that I
    place
    there.
    We close our eyes
    together
    and together find that stillness
    like a pond
    a pond
    when the wind is quiet
    and the surface
    glazes
    gazing unblinking
    at the blue sky.
    I play songs
    that have only the pattern
    of my self in them
    and you hum along
    supporting me.
    You are the
    companion
    to myself.
    The mirror
    with my mother’s eyes.
    July 1935

Midnight Truth
    I am so filled with bitterness,
    it comes from the dust, it comes
    from the silence of my father, it comes
    from the absence of Ma.
    I could’ve loved her better.
    She could’ve loved me, too.
    But she’s rock and dust and wind now,
    she’s carved stone,
    she’s holding my stone brother.
    I have given my father so many chances
    to understand, to
    reach out, to
    love me. He once did.
    I remember his smile,
    his easy talk.
    Now there’s nothing easy between us.
    Sometimes he takes notice of me,
    like coming after me in the dust.
    But mostly I’m invisible.
    Mostly