Weather flew across the field. Over the horizon the land tacked to a cloud. The field continued into night a far town lit. Every farm had a star on a post. Eventually— when electricity reached. That slight wire sagging in the wind brought light. They had to think about it— how it worked. How it was possible to light a corner of the yard with light that crept into the window. A dim light that let them see the beds in a room. The children in them. The way dreams crept into the head with their own light that lighted those nights. Weather had its purpose. To be silent or to rustle leaves from the heavy tree. It was all mystery. The fear they would not pass into the next day, or if they did, it would be too much to bear, and they would have to turn back into darkness. They must be sparing. That was the word— sparing. There was not much. It had to last or they would be left without light. Already the moon shriveled to a curve in the distance. It might not come back. The sparing had to reach across the shadows of the window to be seen through. The cold mornings the window fogged when they could tattoo the glass.
Diane Glancy is a long-time writer. The words, “We must be sparing,” came from her Aunt Martha who lived through the Depression. Glancy is professor emerita at Macalester College. Her latest books: Island of the Innocent, a Consideration of the Book of Job (2020), A Line of Driftwood, the Ada Blackjack Story, (2021), Home Is the Road, Wandering the Land, Shaping the Spirit (2022), “Psalm to Whom(e) (2023), Quadrille, Christianity and the Early New England Indians (2024), The Cubist and the Lost Notebooks of the Painter’s Wife (2025), and Lazarus, the Intended Writings, forthcoming in 2026.
