Day and night
windows thrown wide.
Cattle sounds filled the house
like music.
The fence line mossily slumped
right up to the backdoor
so that if you were
in the pantry
rummaging through noodles and mason jars,
you might hear a cow
happily chewing out in the field.
The cement floor stayed so cool
we began calling it The Rink
and pretending to skate its icy surface-
slip-sliding around in thick socks.
The cats watched
our clumsy twirls and leaps,
oval eyes flicking
back and forth like
windshield wipers in a downpour.
Piper, the inkblot bat catcher,
would splay his sleek paws
to swat at our blurry forms.
slip-swat-slide.
It was the only time Piper came inside.
Otherwise, he'd prowl the farm,
lurk in damp places, and devour
anything that squirmed.
One morning,
we woke to find
ribbons of bloody sparrow
sprawling on the counter.
We suspected
it was Piper's way
of thanking us
for playing.
My brother made muffins
to calm me, but I
couldn't eat the bits
wet with berry bleed.
After that,
I preferred the cat
living up in
the wood stacks.
He was a matted,
wheezy moonling
with sandy eyes and
a loping limp.
Scarecrow was his name,
and I'd never seen him kill anything.
All summer,
my brother would say-
You wait. He's not actually tame.
Just too slow to catch his prey.
Mid-July,
Scarecrow was
flattened by
a semi.
His gore was not
sprawling ribbons,
just a red smear of brains
and fur on the highway.
I learned there are more awful ways to die.
On golden days,
we'd wade
through hip-high
hill grass.
At summits,
rays spread
across the pass
like margarine.
One blustery noon,
while exploring a stony dip,
we stumbled upon a calf
bloated with death gas,
gray and nacreous green.
Its tongue was
missing,
torn clean
from the gummy root.
My brother nudged
the corpse
with his boot.
Murrrrr...
It groaned,
and though I knew
it was just a
mortified maw
of methane,
the sound still made
me scream.
After that,
I stopped skating The Rink,
for the concrete became
a morgue slab.
Day and night,
windows thrown wide.
Cattle calls echoed, low
and lost to time.
Sunbaked smears
appeared on
roadsides, and
windshield wiper stares
began
slip-sliding up
my spine.
pm poetry 