The Iowa Review
Volume 17
Issue 1 Winter
1987
Just Be Home before Sundown
Nance Van Winckel
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Recommended Citation
Van Winckel, Nance. "Just Be Home before Sundown." The Iowa Review 17.1 (1987): 110-111. Web.
Available at: http://ir.uiowa.edu/iowareview/vol17/iss1/36
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Article 36
with
Basket
Blue Ox
Donna
for
it seems possible
that myth
alone could
Today
it possible
this place, or made
have made
at least for us to be here, this small lake
once
the great woodsman
stepped,
on his way home.
Cross-legged
drunkenly,
on the dock we weave
baskets of willow,
we
nests
root, small
mulberry
dip again
here
and again into the cool water. Only
where
could
seem
everything
true: how
that it somehow
the blue
ox
the past imagined for us
a
spring is
single season,
makes us tender. Or that
lies down
shore and wakes
with
each night on the far
a breath that blows off
boats
morning's
fog. In their unsinkable
our husbands fish close to that shore
as we
with
continue
these baskets,
fill them
stories. Our friend the loon listens
to tale after tale; his frequent cry of belief
on the still air. The preposterous
line up in our many baskets on the dock.
detonates
We
have made
them
and there
is no
lies
limit
can hold. The lake is
to what
less
nothing
they
of a man,
than the footprint
these baskets the honor
come back,
of hopeful hands, and men in boats must
ushering
in the dark,
Just Be Home
carrying
Before
beautiful
fishes.
Sundown
I shrug off the red sweater
It's not in me
she's knit around me.
But
to
warm.
keep my shoulders always
Or to get off the bus every time
at our same spot, as if other
110
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corners were
squared-off
I've seen what's
Besides,
a
the block:
down
so
not
village
splendid.
going up
of workers
moving in behind a facade of little doors,
and on the block beyond that, a steel ball
sending the bricks of an old building
I keep asking, Which
Besides,
everywhere.
sun do you mean? She just answers
can he do
about my father. What
something
that takes all day? His
shoulders
go out into light and bring back dusk
as far as the
I've seen his maps
doorstep.
on the car seat, his inked lines
crumpled
across the cornbelt, which
he says
wavering
strangled the breath last year
out of all of us. Besides,
I can't listen
more
to
music?violins
the
any
supper
skipping
their best notes
in the scarred
of slow-falling
grooves
twilight
in the edges of the room Iwant
to be out of, out amid the jazz
only
of crickets, my mouth filled
with the firm gristle of night,
the pop
and fizz of traffic,
headlights and dark roads colliding.
House
of Clues
there are board games
on the floor. Our hands
push
After
dinner
the tin pipes,
and crowbars,
the knives
in one
room
and out
a part
another. Although
of the game, we reward ourselves
How well we know
with money.
not
each other ?faces,
hands ?the
lucent
111