Only Child

Were they to have written her out of the will
she would have walked all the way
to the far side of the estate,
where the stone wall still ends, and where
the rest of us imagine her leaving her sandals
and galloping one minute, trotting the next
falling deliberately and feeling the sun
in the crab grass and pressing her face in it.

Of course, she would come here now
to remember childhood afternoons imagining
a thousand ways to become better
than her parents or to break her rank
in a line of melodies, stalled out and drawn on
in quietude and sadness, and then
suffer in wondering where and when
the legs gave out and faith emptied
in heavy splashes down on the cobblestones.

But instead, a thoroughbred is waiting
in the stable out beyond the orchard.
There is apple cider by the door in the parlor
where the old men, somber in their dark suits,
are gathered with their hands folded, noses
long and down. She comes out of her chamber
glittering and morose, slips easily
down the spiral stairs and waits to be declared
queen of the last generation’s achievements.