On the men of this family: to their future lovers

These men are West Virginia pickaxe, fluent 

in uprooting and the duration of heat

before a harvest. How hands can dance

along to an old folk tune crooning of betrayal. 

Meaning don’t yell or else

they’ll go south bouncing like loose change.

For they, too, are the glint of hardened clay and salt

on the brow. Go ahead and rest

your head on those rocky shoulders come home 

after a day’s hard work. Meaning root with your cheek

until you find the soft spot of flesh

between tendons and be greeted by the day’s sheen. 

What I mean to say is, collect your warmth

before you learn how Septembers spread to deliver stillborns

and leaves crumble to be lost, a fluency in pondering

blood under fingernails and lighted living rooms.

Meaning, these men know their ghosts

by name: a buried father who wrote their mother you are my flower

in the sidewalk crack — and a nephew they watched swell in his death.

What I mean to say is, after the second murder

my man plants a red apple 

tree as a sign of hope. His body tense

as he strikes pickaxe against the earth — all her heavenless things

glinting in the sun on the run before a buck scapes his rooting antlers against

the wispy trunk and teeths the leaves. The men respond with a hedge

of wire. But come spring, the tree’s buds are met with ice and unfurl in scars.

A version of this poem first appeared in Appalachian Review.