Elegy in Loveland

By Kate Meadows

Come dawn, the property spread red and

restless, twenty acres whittling out into

dark. Early blackbirds came and went,

shuffling and splitting in the live oak.

Lone rooftop stood sheltered in cusp of

shadow, tendoned shingle thin-ribboned

with early light. The shutters stuck low to

the sill, frayed hem of the home.

Sun rose, hot air knocked out and caught

in the clothesline, made white-sheet

sails. The old edifice trembled with empty

heft, halls ringing colossal as a cow skull.

The afternoon turned gritty as

sugar, desiccated the wasp

nests clustered in the spare

corners of drafty rafters, beige

dust gathered soft in their

navels.

Dead grass mused about the dirt road,

hungered and hungry still for rain

long-passed beyond the seeded and

subtle hood. Rutted paths trodden by

hooves

and the turn of sod and unruly reeds

where snakes bind close to the rot,

and beyond the water mill, dried

mud stasis of spit-image drought.

The husk of a creek.

Come dusk, the gnats hovered still in

clouds about the plot. The mailbox,

bent and rusting is a lone thoracic

cavity— hissing its elegy— for what is

not dead, but perished.

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Kate Meadows is currently studying English and creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Inspired by the precise hand of poets like Sylvia Plath and Seamus Heaney, she attempts to find footholds in memory through unexpected sound-images, but with an atmospheric touch of the American South. Her work has appeared

previously in Scalawag and Cellar Door. You can keep up with her work on Instagram at @meadowspoetry.