Combines and tractors kick up chaff,
dust, headlights ragged streaks
across half shorn fields. The twilight
smells of sweet grain, dry air.
A two lane highway curves
through small farm towns full of
church steeples, neon bar signs.
She can’t imagine going back to
any place like her hometown even
as the shapes of houses on her
childhood street, shortcuts downtown,
her father’s hands on the steering wheel,
pieces from a series of incomplete
details, linger on.
Out here
she can photograph pasts not
hers, pasts that suddenly found
themselves not exactly abandoned,
more likely inadvertently forgotten,
left behind in the rush to get on
to the next promise.
She’s found her own self
there at the side of some road,
night settled, hands empty.
Marianna Hofer has Studio 13 in the gloriously haunted Jones Building in Findlay, OH. Her poems and stories appear in small magazines, and her b&w photography hangs in local exhibitions and eateries. Her first book, A Memento Sent by the World, was published by Word Press in 2008.