#147 House Gone Blind

by Douglas Campbell

How many years, come June and July, have I sat at this window, listening to them, the men in my life who do the pruning? Afternoon wind lifts the pale face of leaves, sighs through the screen, overture of evening storms. A saw chants somewhere among dark miles of branches.

All their work has not kept the view. From here on my hill I once saw the far ridge of this wide river valley, the campus, the coal trains, roads unwinding. Now my house has gone blind behind towers of spruce, crowns of oak, as time outraces what can be trimmed or foreseen. I never dreamed I’d live sealed in these shadows, this yearly creep of new shade.

Two of my pruners were husbands, who kept the grounds clear while love or breath lasted. Now I hire the man who opens the path to my garden. He comes to the house for money, not for love. He will never reopen my life or my view, never slide a fond hand the length of my thigh.

Still I sit here, searching the view for those faces I knew so well, my earlier pruners, those men I loved, until memory fails and I’m forced to give up. What species is this, growing rank and rampant, obscuring the life I long to remember? Did I once touch those broad, strong shoulders? By candle and moonlight did they ever kiss my breasts?

Or could it be, as it seems, I was born this old?