Avery's Insight / A Slow Fullness by Anna Citrino

Avery’s Insight 

Avery, 1934, age 41
Chugwater, Wyoming

I look in the mirror and notice how small my eyes are. 

I could never make an engine like my brother Leith, 

am not good at math like Carson. 

 

Since I can remember, worlds have spun beyond what I

make sense of. Mr. Hubble recently announced he’s found

other galaxies. Ours isn’t the only one. 

 

Whirling stardust, giant holes in the sky, spacious gaps

between starlight. Worlds lie hidden inside what’s seen.

The stars on Orion’s belt could be galaxies. 

 

I know how to turn a plow to till. Focusing on one row 

at a time is the way I move through a pasture, as well as

how I make it through the world. Sometimes when I’m 

 

preparing a field in the morning beneath the bowl of sky,

the plow moving rhythmically through the soil, the world

turns into a kind of music, and I sense everything is dancing

 

to a melody just beyond what I can hear. I look at the horizon

and sense I’m a pebble in a field that can be turned by a plow.

Everything is larger than anyone will ever understand.

A Slow Fullness

Avery, 1952, age 59
Chugwater, Wyoming


"For cryin' out loud, you’re as slow as molasses in January.”

How many times had I heard someone tell me that? 

It’s not a secret. I’m not like others.
Never was good at school,
but I didn’t cry about being slow. 

While others burrowed into mines 
to cut coal, calculated numbers, or hauled stone 
for railroad bed, I’ve risen each day to light 
spilled across fields, clouds lazing by. 

Nearly sixty years I’ve walked this earth. 
Despite its drought and ice, despite a world 
rattled in war’s despair, and jolts from aging bones
as I bump along gravel roads, I inhale
the wheat’s slow, ripening as it rustles
in the sky’s blue arms. 

Every day the world ripples with wind. 
Grit mixes with cloud. 
There’s no need to forgive myself 
for what I couldn’t change. 
I’ve received my daily bread. 

I pick a few wheat kernels, 
rub them in my hand. 

It’s a good world to give myself to.

Anna Citrino has published in various journals and is the author of A Space Between, and Buoyant, Saudade, and To Find a River. You can find her going for walks near the coast or biking through the countryside where she lives in Sonoma County. Read more of her writing at annacitrino.com.