Side by side on a stained tick
too weak to rise
we listen to the screen door
sneer at the task
it was born to do

You
maybe dreaming of
carousel ponies in May
A lover gone up the Platte
with a sleeve full of aces
A child dropping rocks in the well
watching them splash in the sky
The smell of scorched linen
Veins on the hands of a midwife

I hear a chorus of flies
from the yard
Tenors
singing on the dead hog

When the Bridegroom cometh will your robes be white?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb? . . .

only stirred by the wind

A fox cares for her kits
with blood on her lips
Somewhere a daughter puts up her hair
as a drover waits
hidden in the cottonwoods
Ashes float on the water
left in our wash pan
Cat hair wafts at the edge
of a hole in the screen

All we have left
is to wait for
our turn at the wheel
and for winter to take us