© Timothy Eberly, Unsplash

Remaking Holy City

for Carol

i.

that year you told me lungs
& in wilting heat I offered mine.
I made witness to the temple of your body
threshed on Missouri fields, where remains
of butterweed coiled from sundered wheat,
drenched in soil, scattered grain.

ii.

the frost drowned farms early,
liquid toxin dried your veins,
vestiges of dammed creeks
deprived beneath sunlight.

iii.

on winter afternoons we
pilfered wooden barn beams
from flooded field & purged
the relic scaffold —
we built pillars
for our hickory city,
made sacred by repair.

© Abby Jewett 2019