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Poetry

After two days without food, the edges
of things sharpened, a trick I guessed
my eyes were playing, dividing the edible
ever more starkly from the in—. A rabbit,
hightailing, zigzagged broomstand to
blackberry, and something already tight

in me coiled tighter. And further, when
the long-lashed Appaloosa snuffed me
up and down at the fence, nosing through
my coat for an apple, I stood there empty-
handed, flap-armed, too weak to even say
or sing thanks. Happily, the swallows had
gathered for dusk to do it, their twittering

crosstalk swollen to a cacophonous din
as they dropped one by one from the high
wires to shear openmouthed, cheered, over
the high, towheaded, wind-worked field.

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