Alders ring the pasture, unfurl trembling new-green leaves above pink salmon berry flowers.
I stand with my arms folded on the half door of the stall. At my back, stored hay that smells like last summer’s heat remembered.
The sheep arrange themselves at the mangers. Everyone shoving except for the old ram whose stiff knees counsel patience. One ewe scrambles up to stand in the manger. The others eat calmly from underneath her grass fat belly.
Fluttering in front of a mess of twigs and mud and spit glued to the top of a post, two barn swallows bicker over who will get the best nest above the hay loft and who will have to settle for second best in the feed room.
My oldest ewe leaves off eating and shambles toward me, head thrust forward, asking for a scratch on the chin and the chance to nibble on my gloved hand.
The swallows flicker in and out of the stall door. Warm buff bellies and blue-black heads, tails fletched like arrows. darts that throw themselves through the air, they circle the pasture above the robins that hop awkwardly, searching for grubs in the new grass.
The sheep settle into the business of eating their figure-8 chewing a soft, round motion that grinds the hay against their molars.
pansies, pensées, senses. thoughts— a bouquet of violets,
a violence of violets. voile, voice, voices on my radio. radio waves, waves on the beach head, brain head. my bullying brain carried off by the tidal bore.
how many times will you accept my ungenerous impulse to control your voice. my unvoiced vowels.
after frustration, incoherence. incandescent syntax of fury.
wrath: such a pretty word for the explosive, punching, punishing result of thwarted desire.
athwart: to lie crosswise. as my anger lies at right angles to this keel.
this ocean isn’t big enough, the far shore isn’t far enough to keep you safe. from my punching fist the slap of my open hand.
open hand: that should caress that should make an offering, make a confession.
but the eddy will pull me down again and we will drown in salt and longing.
there is a Siamese cat crossing the alley. he used to be my cat but he lives with some other woman now.
the moon is also a cat— round-faced, old-fashioned, talkative.
this moon-cat follows me from room to room as I wander in the mid-night. heat soaks into my body; curls under my diaphragm; tries to suffocate me.
she finds me in my chair nestles in, will not leave. as I read, I listen to the moon-cat’s chatter, and pray for relief in this brutal, new-world August.
