They Say Goodbye to the Family Farm

The haunting aria
from Puccini's La Divina
 
floats from behind the radio's
brown eyes
 
through the blue clapboard house
past the open
 
screen door-cracked
and paint-peeled-
 
over the creaky stoop
 
and down the boot-worn steps
out into the evening
 
to disappear into the hush
like Emma has.
 
Inside, her worn vanilla chenille afghan
sprawls over their scruffy brown velvet couch,
her eider pillow still warm.
 
He sits in his yellow, straight-back chair-
its tired legs wire-held-tilted against
her garden wall,
her basil and rosemary still leather-green.
 
He waits as quiet covers the clod-turned field.
 

Gloria Piper Roberson