Evening Light
It has been eighteen months
and still she weeps when she enters
the house of their happiness, ramshackle
low desert home that he owned, hers now.
This could go on for years although
she moves ably from task to task
except when grief stops her.
She does not sleep in his house
but stays at her own high desert home,
haven for fox and deer, white-crowned
sparrows and dark-eyed juncos,
on land as wild as she can keep it.
Only when she paints does sorrow leave her.
Then nothing exists except shapes and colors:
mountains layered in distance, evening
light, a spill of boulders, the cougar
who hunts on nearby hills,
scolded in daylight by ravens
who won’t let him rest.
*
Penelope Moffet is the author of three chapbooks, Cauldron of Hisses (Arroyo Seco Press, 2022), It Isn’t That They Mean to Kill You (Arroyo Seco Press, 2018) and Keeping Still (Dorland Mountain Arts, 1995). Her poems have been published in many journals, including One, ONE ART, Natural Bridge, Gleam, The Rise Up Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, The Ekphrastic Review and Gyroscope.
