The First Four Life Sentences for Michael Macklin

by Stephen Petroff

“the melody
  is memory itself ”

I lay for the night on the yellow roadside,
in a deep field of curving gourds,
across from the dark ploughing ground.

Four steps inside the woods, a stone wall had long been
hidden, and behind it, an old farm dump, with a forgotten
kitchen midden beneath it, where he found a medicine
bottle, small and made of glass, colored cobalt blue.

Everything that had meaning to him, everything that had
ever been of value — all numinosity — he had found
there, in the comfort zone.

Mist coiled, uncoiled, and coiled again, the length
of the ravine, following the stream that carved
these terraces.