They came out of the shack that stood at the dip of the draw.

Albert first, though he grumbled about going to school at 15,

then Benjamin, named for her brother who’d died in the war,

and Caroline, who had green eyes that strangers noticed,

Dancing Deborah as she liked to be called, followed,

then Edward, for her husband’s pa who’d died at the bottom of the mine

and Frank, who liked to play dress up and hid an old baby doll.

She stood at the end of the line and held squirming Georgia

with one hand on the swell of her belly.

The postmistress took the picture which would hang on the wall

by Christmas.