Still: The Journal

The narrow stall recedes like Van Gogh’s room 

in Arles. Where his single bed would be, a ewe, 

well-muscled, dirty white, thrusts into the space 

and stares us down –her flat face a wedge 

between us and a slight, gray-mottled lamb 

nearly hidden in the bedding straw.

Severe and filled with life, the tight expanse 

swells and shrinks as if it breathed,

as if the heat in the ewe’s eye might sear,

as if everything important lay 

within these wooden walls.

Old Short Tail

He stood in the dark cube of the stall

at the foot of the ladder to the loft

where I escaped to be with the sky,

in the odor of hay, the warm musk

of living cattle, dusty air

of ground corn feed —this steer 

we called “Short-Tail,” the one

who’d be our hamburger come fall. 

Each time I passed, I spoke to him, 

caressed the broad expanse between his quiet eyes.

I loved the warm furred bone of that wide face, 

sank my fingers into the shallow bowl of it.

What did I say to him? Something

like thank you, though no words could hold 

the covenant we’d entered with this one—

chosen for our table—and I’m sorry

betrayed the dignity of his part 

in what we shared. (None 

of his half-brothers in the herd

were meant to survive, of course, 

but we had less to do, we thought, 

with their dying. We died, too, 

we understood.) I took hold of the ladder’s rungs,

free to lift myself to the hay-strewn floor above.

I swung my legs out the open second-story door, 

dreamed the lowering sun in the silence

of his huffing breath, the small sounds

of his hoofs on the dirt floor. On restless days, 

muffled crashes as he flung his length

against plank walls, used his wide snout 

to flip the water pail 

off its hook. What he wanted

I was not at liberty to give.

At dusk I swung down and 

stroked him goodbye. I stood 

a moment longer than made sense,

walked through unfurling air

to find Mother penned between 

sink and stove, her hair curling, damp

with supper’s steam.