While reading Gretel Ehrlich's The Solace of Open Spaces (a passage about the death of one of the largest sheep ranches in Wyoming, the tremulous effects of its bankruptcy on the community including the impact on the lives of the hired hands), I pulled from my shelves Robert Frost's 'Death of the Hired Hand'. It's just like Frost to spill a tragic, rendering narrative and in the midst, produce such astonishing beauty:
Part of a moon was falling down the west, Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills. Its light poured softly in her lap. She saw it And spread her apron to it. She put out her hand among the harp-like morning-glory string, Taut with the dew from garden bed to eaves, As if she played unheard some tenderness That wrought on her beside him in the night.