[from Ann Townsend's Dime Store Erotics, Silver Fish Review, 1998]
Trimmings
Restless,
pulled outside by fog
and
fitful rain, she carries scissors
and
basket to trim the last wild things.
She
crouches, wind-shaded,
before
parsley, tarragon, thyme:
herbs
weep into her hands,
spiders
scatter across pine needles.
Half-dark,
wholly cold,
the
evening of first frost
falls
down as rain, cool mouth
against
her unprotected neck.
Across
the lake her lover waits
in
a room warm with smoke,
jukebox's
muted melody,
deep
brown bottles ranged
across
the bar. Once she leaned
into
his mouth, whiskey sweet
between
them. The tiny napkins
beneath
their drinks grew wet
with
condensation. Then
their
fingers touched,
an
accidental convergence of the stars.
She
shakes loose a bunch of sage.
It
swings like a heavy skirt
in
her hands, one caterpillar
dropping
free. In the sky
the
constellations fuzz and fade.
After
the End
Because
I left him there so you could see
his
body, broken by the fall, the hawk's
small
relatives hopped from higher branches
and
called a kind of glee that he was dead.
By
afternoon, the ground around him dusted
with
feathers and gravel kicked up, he looked
like
a bundle of rags tossed
from
a car and tumbled there, but still
graceful,
neck flung back in the moss and dirt,
and
the yellow claws curled to question marks.
Then
the trees were quiet, the other voices
gone.
When a car turned into the driveway,
I
knew it wasn't you. They sat a while,
four
men, the same dark suits, carefully
tended
hair. Missionaries: I could tell
from
the window where I stood beyond
their
line of sight. All their doors opened
as
if by a common feeling, something
unseen
and insistent in the air.
They
did not see the hawk lying there, dead
from
its long fall, or age, or driven down
by
the crows that nest in the pines above.
They
did not see me. I stepped back, behind
the
curtain, and wished you home, who could see
these
things and know what is beloved, what is dead.
Mid-February,
White Light
Country
music and a black dog barking
on
a chain, and the voices of grown children
complaining
— Dad, when are we
going to burn
this
pile? — cast over from
next door
on
the first nearly warm afternoon.
Everyone
has come out to see the sun.
Slow
bees cluster at the porch step
and
the cat has wakened in a pool of light.
So
when the chainsaw coughs into gear,
to
clear dead wood away from the gas line,
it's
like some strange natural description —
the
ground frozen in its dream of January
creaking
beneath our feet,
the
impetus of metal cutting into wood,
the
urge to flight when the bee
hazards
its way, wind-driven or scent-impelled,
into
my hair — to touch, to continue.
Even
our unmade bed, framed by the peeling
slats
of the bedroom window,
looks
not like a tranquil reminder
but
disturbed, shaken from a measured stillness
of
white sheets, pillows, red quilt
cast
on the floor, a reduction from action to disorder.
Or
the gift of a warm wind that feels wet.