I 

“Solomon? Since I talked with him I’ve thought
Again about trying to make a go of it 
In Idaho. As I say, this rainy weather 
In Oregon is looking better and better to me.
The first time I met him, it was in Al’s Bar, 
Down the street. Five years ago, I think. 
Well, you know, Al keeps a friendly place, 
One where you don’t mind stepping in 
And acting neighborly. And, there he was, 
Down at the end of the bar. I noticed him 
Because he was shaking, folding and unfolding a clipping.
‘You from these parts?’ I said. With all this space
In the West, it doesn’t hurt to close it up 
Whenever you can. He said, ‘Well, no, not really,’
And kept folding and unfolding the clipping and looking
Down at his hands. When he stopped, I could hardly
See it, his hands were so square and big, 
Like the farm work of his time. Besides, he took
His hat off, and you could see the white skin
Of his head, particularly near the part, 
Where his hat took a settled, permanent place.
But his face had lightened to a buckskin color.
He had the look of a farmer who had seen a lot
Of land that needed working. Then it rose 
From him. ‘I suppose you would say from Idaho.
I wanted to homestead there,’ he said. ‘I tried it
Last year, or was it then? Not much money 
To start with, but my wife Geneva and I and our children
Found our place. It seemed a thousand miles
From nowhere, at least two weeks east from here.
I built a cabin from the boards I had brought 
Along.’ Geneva said, ‘Solomon, we can make it,
But we need money for spring. Go back to Tamarack
And leave us here.’ Then I told her how I felt.
But she said, ‘We can make it with the provisions we brought.
Go back, Solomon. By spring, we’ll have a start,
Then a barn by those trees, cows grazing there,
And a house like we’ve wanted, beside a stream.’
Well, the way she looked, her eyes imploring, 
And her soft brown hair, and her hope, how could I
Say no? So off I went, Geneva waving to me 
Until I was out of sight. It was the hardest thing
I have ever done to look around and see 
Where I was going. I worked at Tamarack 
Autumn and winter, numb from wondering 
How they were, all alone out there, and wanting
To get back to them. April finally came, 
And I loaded the wagon with everything we needed,
Dresses and dry goods, shoes and ribbons besides.
I travelled as hard as I could, considering the horses,
And kept looking and looking for smoke far off
In front of me, coming from the chimney, 
To tell me I was near. But I never saw it. 
He looked again at the clipping in his hands, 
Smudged and yellow, and said, ‘When I got there,
It looked like autumn and winter had never left,
The snow still hanging on the roof, the door 
Open, nothing planted, nothing done, 
And then I went inside, to see the dusty cribs 
And Geneva, still against them . . . and the floor
Red and dusted with shadows. And I was here,
Trying for money so we could get started . . . 
I couldn’t stay out there.’ And he looked at me
As if pleading for help, then down into his hands,
Unfolding and folding the clipping as if by doing it
He could wear out his sorrow.” 

II 

The colors of the sun against the hills 
In the evensong of life, and yet another 
Year had gone. The colors crept down 
Like frost and the glory of God, intermingling 
In them night and day. All was over 
When the family saw them, over like the evening
Wind. In the meadows and clusters of pines 
It whispered to the edge of the sullen earth, 
In the seethe of knowing, under the shaken plume
Of knowledge. Solomon and Geneva saw 
The land cut, as it were, for them, a place 
For them between the great divide and the sea.
There, he said in the voice of conscience, there
Is our home, or the hope of it. Geneva, 
Can it be that home if we settle here? 
A half of a year will make it ours if we stay,
She replied in the moment of seeing him 
As she wished him to be. And then in resolve,
Let me stay the winter with the children 
While you work in Tamarack, and so 
It was out, the only way of keeping 
The land. Where in the flicker of grey is death,
The wandering light, release? I want this home,
She said, in the tolerance of a breath, and I
Shall stay. Where is the imperious will but fast
Against the land that holds them? To Tamarack,
He said, bright as possession, like the coin having
Mastery. There is my knoll where home 
Shall be, not this cabin of our duration 
As we should not be, itinerants in hope of more.
A winter more, she said, and it is ours, 
The gaze of meadows, the water and soil 
Urgent for grain, the quiet sky, and the light
Lazy as spring. Our home! And I shall keep it,
Winter through, she said as if it were no winter,
But a day of rest. And then beside him, their children,
Or in his arms, awake to happiness. The future
Declined from that day and would not rest,
But as a bole of pain grew into that tower
Of resolve and broke it easily, sacred 
As a sacrifice. He said, then think of me 
In Tamarack, and turned to what he needed
Away from home. Geneva? The subtle portrait
On a stand beside a bed. The wisps 
Of hair she flicked to clear her face, brown
As the veil of earth, eyes quizzical as worry,
But light as a soft morning, her body lithe
And restless, supple to the rule of God. 
And Solomon? A name like a fetish he tried
To honor, but not as a patriarch, more 
Like a seer: angular as a fence or cross, 
Bending as he seemed to fit, concern 
Like an agony to please, a burden 
To his clothes that could not shape themselves,
And altogether like the square largeness 
Of his hands. Together, they kept the cabin
Like a tidy loom where they would weave 
The colors through their bright fidelity. 
Their children? Hard to presuppose or know,
But theirs. Such small alliances, wont 
To shimmer with translucent light, a guess
Of women that might have been, of course like her,
Or him, as others might suppose, not they.
She whispered what he might take, advice 
Hanging from her words like surety. 
And he, the slight concerns of food and health
Like the hundreds of miles that would intervene,
And for safety the gun and knife in a drawer,
Nearby. Then the wood for winter near the door,
Neatly stacked, and provisions in the loft 
And ready. What else? What else but land
Beyond their vision, the canyons, and peaks like clouds
In the thin blue haze, and time. He turned, ready,
Holding her with one arm, as he pulled 
His horse from grazing to the suggestion of the miles
Ahead, and leaned to kiss his children, and then
Away, easily in the saddle, gazing back at her,
The children, cabin, everything diminishing
As he moved, and he waved, and they, in the slow
Desperation of goodbye. He could not turn forward
For seeing them there, until they were taken from view
By a vale beyond their meadow sinking into darkness,
And they were gone. From that time on he pieced
The events of time together like fragments he could not
Understand, though the evidence impaled the past
Like needles dropping suddenly through his inquiry.
There must have been a disturbance beyond the door,
And she left the cabin with the gun on her arm,
The sharp wind of October against her frailty
Where she shivered in the grey dusk. The rising
Wind, then the thunder over the plain that shook her.
She went into the darkness of a shed, wildly
Gazing. Then the severe and immediate rattle
Behind her, and the strike behind her knee, the prongs
Of venom there that made her scream. Now
The whirling thoughts for Solomon or help
From anywhere. Bleed the poison out. 
Go slowly, she told herself, and bleed the poison
Out. Stumbling to the cabin, she opened the door
In the glaze of fright and found the drawer that held
The knife. She sat, livid against the lightning.
To find the place to cut. Nowhere to see, 
Behind and under, but she felt the red periods there.
A piece of kindling for a brace, a cloth 
For tourniquet. She took the knife and swept it
With her hand. But the chickens in the shed.
They must not starve. A few steps back 
To the shed, and she emptied a pail of grain
And opened the door. As she moved, she held
The stick of the tourniquet numbly against her leg.
Slowly, slowly to the cabin, then wildly in 
To seize the knife. She held it against her leg
And with a gasp twisted it in. But too deep!
The blood pulsed against her hand, again, 
Again, no matter how tightly she twisted the stick
To keep it in. It spread on the rough floor 
As she felt herself weaken, the waves of blackness
Before her eyes. The children! What will happen
To them? she cried to herself. The lamp nickered
At the sill. What good is the need and planning now?
Tears for dust. The girls will starve to death
In the clatter of the wind, and the light of afternoon
Will carve through their sallow loneliness. 
They will lie here and cry for food, and no one will hear.
The waning fire, the gusts at the filming window.
Solomon! Forgive me! What can I do? 
What else can I do? She took the gun again
And turned it to the crib, propping its weight.
She looked at them as they slept, arms lightly
Across each other. You will be with me, 
She whispered to them. The trigger once, then again,
The flat sounds walling her against the error
That they would live beyond her careful dying.
The gun fell from her. She crawled to the bed
In the corner and, taking her finger, traced 
In blood on the white sheet, “Rattlesnake bit,
Babies would starv—” and the land fell away
Beyond her sight, and all that she was collapsed
In an artifice of death that he afterwards saw.
Solomon!