For Those Who Never Know

By Lynette K. Allen

First Place Winner

Perhaps her name was Sarah,

Bunching skirts up

As she turned away

From cultivated fields

To load the tools of planting,

Squinting at the hot horizon

Through a wagon’s dust,

Wiping on a muslin sleeve

The sweat of prairie-tending;

Muscles,

Bending-tired,

Aching from the births of children

And of land.

In cresting waves

Long past the breaking

Of her camp,

The hoped-for green

Without her knowing

Grew.

And those of us who came behind

Found feasts within the furrows

That she left

And left

And left.