The prairie groves fell. A fat ox pulled

a cart over long rows of plowed loam.

The timberframe house on a hilltop,

clothes whipped on a line.

My great grandmother was born

in the small room upstairs.

Her father stained the barn

with linseed oil and pig’s blood.

Red clover offered itself as forage

and leaned purple in evening light

when the barn swallows gathered

their mud and grass stems.

My grandmother was born

in the small room upstairs, too.

Her father never missed

milking, not even that morning

in February when her cry first

floated through the cracked window

into the summer kitchen

where she would one day teach me

to shell peas, can tomatoes,

to keep a record,

to dig the holes

for my own searching roots.