Legend by John Freeman

Legend

My father’s father 

rode the rails west

into Grass Valley 

and buried three

children in the 

shadow of a tree that

spread its arms 

around his bakery.

Cold nights he saw

stars he didn’t know

existed, and heard

wild animals howling 

with a loneliness he

did know. 

His wife was dead. Every 

morning he woke

to the bread and 

chill, horses snuffling

in the dark. He had 

starved before,

in Canada, a winter

so ragged it killed

his dog, and this grief 

was that feeling,

shifted north into 

his chest.

A soul is not a 

diamond pressed 

down into something

hard like rock, 

but rather, the word

my father’s father

said to himself on

those too-cold

California nights when all

he could see was 

the work ahead of him,

the dead behind—

her name

He’d say her name.