A Season For Parable

My daughter opens the barn door

and sits within its frame
watching a field of grass
lean toward the railroad tracks.

The blades are tall and tangled

like her  feelings toward his homecoming.
Some pigeons rustle in the rafters.
Feathers fall – white with shadings of gray
and duffel bag green.

She notices two or three, more likely two.

This is her husband’s second return
from a second tour in Khandahar.

Home for half a year and then

he’s sent back. The corn is either collared
in green leaves or left as ashen husks.

The only certainty
is a harvest of chance. The promise
of a bride keeping
her hair long, clinging to a neck

that twists in sleep where she dreams

the worst of what could happen.
or turns in light, as she scans shadows
cast on stone, dew on vines or whatever
constitutes a pattern. A sign.

Once she asked  me– if it was worth

the heartache of loving him.
 And  I had no answer

as we both glanced down
at some spilled grain. The scattering
of a prayer.