Janet Ford

His Time

We followed the blowflies to find him
face-down afloat in the drift of the creek.
He’d been washing his clothes and before him billowed
the cleanest white shirt you ever saw.

I’d seen it before, the other side.

The stillborn calf I found last spring,
two days straight its mama bellowed
like it was hung on the horns of the moon,
not frozen in birthsop beside her in the snow.

And that time my slingshot found a crow,
he slowed, then stopped midair before he fell,
like just remembering he couldn’t fly.

“It was his time.” Daddy pushed back his hat
and looked to where the maples stirred.
Light dappled over the frame of the man
like the laying on of a thousand hands.

What I want to know is
what he wrestled alone in the water,
what he wanted, that he wouldn’t let go.
Had he caught the tail of a long white robe,
or had something slipped him,
left him there,
an empty husk
holding nothing?