Erica Romkema

Erica Romkema received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Environment from Iowa State University, and has been previously published in dirtcakes, Root Stock, and Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment. She enjoys entangling herself in agricultural adventures, and recently went from volunteering on organic farms in France to serving local food from a school bus kitchen along Colorado's Front Range. She wishes for a pair of red cowboy boots. 

nettles

her fingers stung for hours

after plucking the nettles

for his soup. like an elbow

hit hard, that same irate burn

gathered up into fingertips once

soft enough to stroke his face.

now he hid it behind a beard,

and kissed her with scratches.

still, he kissed. and so then.

she dug and picked for this soup

when nettles grew in spring

and after dinner, soaked her

fingers, while he coaxed and

plucked the strings of his violin,

the fire dancing behind his chair.

Finding

1.

Across the road, the neighbors

ploughed up clay pots,

arrowheads, a skull, learned

they lived on part of an old

Sioux Trail. Some warrior-

traveler must have died

right on their property,

and now here he was, white

and hollow-eyed, an artifact.

A small green sign hoisted,

marked the spot, but behind

stayed the machinery, old

implements kept for parts.

And a white barn, dismal

as white barns become

without regular painting.

A herd of Holstein cows

confined to a manure-thick lot

overlooking one man’s

burial ground.

2.

A hundred yards away,

I sat on the hill gazing down

into our meadow, to where grass

reached pond and marsh, our small

wilderness. The wind, coming up

over the rise, found my hair

and tangled into it.  And I

wondered if that same wind

remembered, before, the black

locks of  some Sioux girl

who wandered from the trail

to listen to tree frogs

singing in the wetlands.

3.

The grove behind

the alfalfa field gathered

deer bones, skulls and

the long femurs of legs.

Smaller skeletons too,

rodents we couldn’t identify,

guessed, studying the neat

ivory organization of those

remaining partially intact.

We climbed on the pile

of rocks at the edge of the

grove and our dog sniffed

around madly—rabbits hiding,

maybe.  Deeper in the trees

the soil dipped in concave

circles, odd places, like bowls

carved in the dirt by human

hands, though not ours.

The grove beckoned those

bright afternoons, in the

mystery of ancient things.

But night warned us away,

starred, shot with moonlight

grasses, rustled, twigs cracked

in the restless quiet. Foliage

heavy with the dark. From

our windows in the tall white

house, we could hear a wind

wailing over whatever

had been lost.