By Kathryn Hunt
for my father
Tonight, I stood outside, named the stars
you’d named for me. Dug out maps
that told you how to go. My actions,
you once said, let those stand for me.
This morning your old Timex stopped.
It had chirped every afternoon at 4:15,
to ready you for supper. I’d worn it
on my wrist for months, its greeting
like a shade pulled up in winter
to let the last light of day
pour in. It sent a quick small word
beneath a river. Plum, it said. Or axle.
I held it to my ear, heard water seep
from a Cretaceous sea that once
covered all this rangeland. Arrowheads,
a buffalo horn found on the ranch.
You took those with you. Now
you’ve gone further than you ever
drove on two-lane highways.
Kathryn Hunt makes her home on the coast of the Salish Sea. Her poems have appeared in The Sun, Rattle, Orion, the Missouri Review, the Carolina Quarterly, The Writer’s Almanac, and Narrative. Her first collection of poems, Long Way Through Ruin, was published by Blue Begonia Press, and she’s recently completed a second collection of poems, Say What a River Is. She has translated and published the work of Catalan poet Marie-Mercè Marçal and is the recipient of residencies and awards from Ucross, Artists Trust, and Joya AIR (Spain). She made documentary films for many years. Her film, No Place Like Home, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in Italy. She’s currently at work on a memoir, Why I Grieve I Do Not Know. She’s worked as a waitress, shipscaler, short-order cook, bookseller, printer, food bank coordinator, filmmaker, and freelance writer. kathrynhunt.net
All work by Kathryn Hunt
