BILL, WYOMING

 

 

He said I was faster than

the heat deep in the hardest

dark cranny of grassland.

 

Hell, I believed the dead

danced in the weed tree

wind-breaks. He showed me

 

the tight kites of organdy

& I tangled there. I guess

it was a breeze that carried

 

me after him. I clutched up 

the motherless chicks &  hid

my loot low in the bramble.

 

Sugar, I coughed & every

sweet need knuckled me,

it cracked my panting animal

 

like an egg on the stovetop.

I could not forget his ghost

in the bold-cold henhouses,

 

the ten-acre field of ragweed

the boys burned on purpose.

Not long after the concrete

 

men smoothed into a gray lake

its foundation, the house sunk in

& the heavy bird landed there.