Last Thoughts of Hebron

Last Thoughts of Hebron Brandon Krieg (bio) Gas flares light the hill at night.My birthplace named for the cave wherethe prophet buried his wife, I won't visit again. Everyone else sold out, but what gooddoes it do me to own the rightto the oil under my house here in Dickinson? I get a check signed bymy banker ex-son-in-lawand have the same fears a rig worker from the campswill break in through the summer porchto steal Dad's butcher block I keep from the shop long closed on Buffalo Street . . .I must be losing it. The block holds openthe door to a memory of him rocking the knife through rib after rib—doorthat's about to slam shut regardless.He wore the grooves across the rings when he was least himself,was a fluency without thought,I can't tell anything about him from tracing these markings,yet I do. When he died, I kept onsurveying highways; child of the thirties, I kept on calculating. My brother, who sanghymns so well on the road homefrom the fields the pastor overheard and said End Page 156 "be in the contest," died in another state.He was late that day and didn't winor even sing, and I am late to meet him now, am almost sureI'll miss him entirely, thoughthat's not what I was taught. I trace the lines in the block and what comes back to meis this image of us madly shakinggrasshoppers from our shirts as dad shook them from our hair and we alllaughed at the one clinging stubbornlyto his Sunday cigar. Grasshoppers long ago eradicated like a plague. I can guess nowwhat the prophets were really saying to usas we swung our legs in that first pew, but quietly, so as notto get our knees squeezed:I have seen, but too late! End Page 157 Brandon Krieg brandon krieg's most recent poetry collection is Magnifier, winner of the 2019 Colorado Prize for Poetry chosen by Kazim Ali and a finalist for the 2022 ASLE Book Award in Environmental Creative Writing. He lives in Kutztown, PA, and teaches at Kutztown University. Copyright © 2024 University of North Dakota