The Weavers of Ansari

by Melissa Dickson

Already there’s a breeze and something colder
in it. The boys wild as these woods, too young
to think of the long decay. On the air, voices
remote as the sun, our solar powered radio:
election fraud, poverty, threats, car bombs
at the weaver's polls. We’re miles from the road,
a half-mile from water and an enchantment
of river cane thick with insects. The rustle
of gear, a fireside night—thin steaks turned
once, asparagus, honeyed tea, one block each
of pocket-softened Hersheys, all shuttled
over granite, through scissoring switchbacks,
under emerald bursts of saplings. We listen
past dusk as the radio fails taking with it
the weavers and their silk rugs—
unimagined, colorless as thinning smoke—
taut on silent looms.