april 7
churn(butter) noble(y)
i turn to thoughts of snow—
omen robins red as hatchet-swings
their color struggling through snow
like ford-horses, slow stemless gathered
darkened hearts i'm surprised
they haven't burst to flame yet
or melted to a slag of
spring-song napalm between
deer-rubbed yew.
chandelier of geiger counts (geigs?), morse
as a zulu tongue, tugging ahead
of us witchwaterward. i turn to thoughts
of snow for coolness and to melt
cleanly into my canteen and
to keep from thinking of the
rut streams, and the wood processing
plant and the broom handles
from kimova, glowing
like porch nights filled with jar-catchers.
none of them wear
anything pick up stones to skip
in the resevoir as carelessly
as windfall apples for a sill pie.
an eighty-year-old woman
approaches me and asks if the
milk from her cow is good to drink—
her skin let slip with age from her bones
like sunlight through corn-silk, hands
curling from the good swerve
of plow-years, in
shin-high rubber boots. i say, drink
all you want, mother.
the most terrifying
are the trees, silken with windlessness
as alien intelligence, having
kept everything else
for so long.
Really strong stuff.
