EARLY MORNINGS
It was country so flat...

MOON ROAD
Starting out along the beat-up asphalt...

BUSRIDE
We are rolling. Snow and stubble...

GOING HOME LATE
It's late and the clock downtown...

YOU KNOW
You know who...

LATE OCTOBER
I am rain-tranced, fed with sleep....

URIA BYLER'S ELEGY FOR PALMER LEHMAN
Palmer Lehman has been gone for quite a few years....

A GAME
Well worn, stinking...

FOOT-WASHING
. . . having loved his own which were in the world...

EAST ON 46
Fog spiders out its net...

MEMORIAL DAY: DIGGING THE GARDEN
Just less than spade deep...

R.T.
went out of...

ON THE ISLAND
This guy drinks a lot and rides his legs...

THOSE COWS: THEIR DOUBLE LIFE
They come ambling around the shagbark stand...

HERBAL
Call it Cleavers, Jupiter's Nut...

BUZZARD
Ten turns above the woods...

FLYING WITH THE CROWS
Enter March. Wind scants...

HERONS STAND
Herons stand on stick legs...

CONFUSION
Those horses have necks...

TO TURTLE
The round house and the...

MY ANCESTORS
My ancestors abound within me...

ATLEE MULLET'S EXPERIENCE
I too had an experience ...

THE TEMPTATION
The tree was hollow and I...

TEETH
Blank white. My coat is full of wind....

WHOSE MOON
What about that bird...

A NEW WORLD
Waking up, I see it's all different....

FLAT LAND
At the edge of the world, the sun burns....

GNAW
I may have made a mistake here...

THOSE COWS: THEIR DOUBLE LIFE

They come ambling around the shagbark stand,
up from the lower pasture and its smelly pond,
pretending random travel and no surprise
at anything: serene, duplicitous.
Heavy necks and rumps hung equally low,
they mime tame endurance of cold,
fake calm in blinding wind, weary ache
humble in their bellowing till after dark.
They hunch outside the window. Eyes
too deep for thought scorn what they see.
Cows come to the porch while we sleep,
flex massive lips around doorknobs,
heave their fat secret malice inside.
They shift chairs, shake the drawer with the knives,
crack the cellar door. Mornings, all adrowse,
things seem out of place to us.


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