Christina's World
Aya Burton

What makes a body
this tired, this removed

more the land’s than her own
possession – she never learned

how to govern it,
how to bind it or love it.

She lends herself to the earth
and leans into it now

to smell the soil for a second time
as if she’s forgotten

the sweet burn of dry hay
and September’s thick wood smoke.

Summer’s green gone,
she could stay here awhile;

today the grass is so loving,
the farmhouse so far

worlds away, at the top
of the hill.​