Issue Thirty-Six - Summer 2020

Telling Time

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.