Favor

A friend called, wanting us to find her deceased

kin in the cemetery. We broke up, dragging

the hills and trees in our roving, following names,

tracing the fine lichen’s tiny bite on the crumbling 

stones as we moved backward past the fresh-tilled,

the stacks of warriors, the prairie breakers

whose names have worn to nothing. We needed two

passes before we found them, posed them

into photographs, noted how the timber

on the northern side had success in tearing down

the barbed-wire fence, the dark trees of an unknown

kingdom, inching their way from the past to meet us

and scrape-down the sun. We called to and found each

other. We took our retreat, holding the last, long rays of light. 

Jared Pearce wrote The Annotated Murder of One (Aubade, 2018). His poems have recently been or will soon be shared in BlazeVOX, Pa'lente!, Panoplyzine, WORK, and American Writers Review.