All gone: the geese, the ducks,
the great grays. It has gotten quiet here.
Dry and quiet.
The inner once-upon-a-time
grew tired. Tiredness kept growing,
lugging all that expectation
every which way
in late summer of the mind.
Night sirens
do not find whoever pulls the covers up,
turns to story:
the shadow-seeming crow perched on a fence.
The bush that seems coyote.
Cow that is, black and placid-walking
a second following, calf in line behind,
all nodding yes, yes, yes.
Birds flit in,
check the summer feeder—what has been
might come again.
The black not-a-stick bites the dog,
disappears in a patch of lamb’s ear.
In the gratitude desk the gift of solitude
lies in the keyhole drawer.
A dreamed road,
a high-banked ancient path.
Cattle on both sides. White here.
Black there. Wire fence, less impediment
than idea.
Mid-road, a small white calf
I shoo in with the black.
A white cow lies moaning on the verge.
I nudge her up,
find a black calf underneath,
almost herd them to the whites
when a Barred owl wakes me.
Some days
I think: Come back, come back.
Others, not so much, having lived certain
plot points of long marriage.
The dogwood, its bark stripped,
limbs sprouting below the antler damage,
dead above.
Why not a dogwood bush
if it wants that much to live?
Look into the future’s open mouth
its uvula waggles like a lure,
a tasty lure that beckons, Come and get it.
