Sandra Fees
Drift of Days
Sandra Fees
Drift of Days
We never went anywhere but the grocery store, sometimes
a cousin’s or the auction house, where it was hotter than
the hell the preacher thundered about on Sundays. Some
days we planted sunflower seeds or hit softballs with my
father’s splintered bat. Some days we picked beans. Rooted
to four acres, mine was a universe rimmed by Blue Ridge
mountains, which were so low you’d have thought they were hills,
and above me a whale of a sky, as boundless as my summered
imaginings. And cornfields sashaying in every direction.
Mornings I packed and unpacked my small suitcase, meant
for doll’s clothes, wedged it beside me on the wooden steps
between stories. I took off for somewhere I’d never been,
no idea what I might need. I didn’t know we’re always going
somewhere we’ve never been, or that decades later I’d learn
we’re already there, present moment, I mean. After dinner,
we played Parcheesi and sat on the porch willing the corn
to grow in the endless fields. My mother flung open the windows
for the cross breeze, except on fertilizer days when everything
stayed shut tight, the smell worse than the heat. But on those
window-flung nights, the air swept a coolness across the fields
from that somewhere-I’d-never-been, swept across my skin
like I was being polished, like I was going to be somebody,
was somebody, like Emily Dickinson, the kind of somebody
who prefers the imprint of curvaceous letters to bluster
or hustle, someone who admires fig buttercups and crouches
at a little desk, ready to loosen the freedom of long dashes—
Sandra Fees’ poetry has appeared in Crab Creek Review, Nimrod, SWWIM, River Heron Review and Witness, among others. Her first full-length collection, Wonderwork (BlazeVOX Books), was released in October 2024. You can learn more about her at sandrafees.com.
