The Millworker’s Wife

We are a vow to an empty field, the field’s
dropseed dropping, the field hurt from sun,
the millstream stitching the evenings one
to the next, the wheel turning with it

to open every seam. Steady. This mill

is empty, its windows long since sealed
for the last time, hands ash that wrapped
around these boards. I have been counting
the birds left in the rafters, the light

sorting through the roof, and the stones in the river

keep stumbling past my reach. This song of fragments
opens, falters. I know of nails and sandpaper,
saws and rivets; still, the pine boards keep splitting,
the wheel comes apart. The millstream freezes

and breaks again. How the water shatters. Love,

I’ve been meaning to tell you about the birds
in the field beyond our house, how they swell
and fray and settle as I pass, how I have
never made sense of things like this, that gather,

that split on my every step.