Fence
And the fence needs
built, and I
of course, say yes to
the secret language of
wire, of keep out,
of property, and respect
the landowner, then the land,
so I drive the backhoe;
the hydraulic breath, spiderlike,
blows smoke through
the brush, and
a bird is hit
by the blade I push.
A bird, the bird,
an eagle, young, ugly,
fearsome,
bald but truly
defeathered and bleeding
and peep peep peep,
the unnerving blood.
It squawks in my hand,
and I remember the words,
A fossil we can leave,
but something of life lived
before, bury and destroy. I
left smashed stones,
sharpened, and clay, hardened,
in my wake, and again,
a symbol in my hand,
and I thought to free it to
life unknown and wolves,
Think. It’s easier with chew.
But it’s gone,
and I looked up
to the hills, feeling watched,
a spine of rock, fishlike
fearsome,
sent as punishment from
God, or a god, another,
so I grabbed and twisted the feathered neck,
then buried the eagle
beneath a Copenhagen headstone,
a signpost of a secret language
that I’d try to speak
to others at home
around my five-hundred dollar table,
cast-off wood, covered in tobacco tin lids,
a hundred at five dollars, each,
and epoxy, a joke
of excess.
Transubstantiation
of bone to oil to plastic
leaves a Gatorade bottle
on the roadside,
beside an empty
can of Bud Light,
disintegrating, from
last year. It will return to soil,
potentially enrich
the zone above
shale that can be changed
to oil. But move on
because the bottle
in the rearview is now too small
but closer than it appears.
The first things
shall pass away too
in the incandescence of headlights,
artificial light blotting out
planet and star above,
and wind,
draining the empty chill of time.
Where are you going
since there’s little to do but wait?
And that’s what I mean when
I say this is
the end, time to move on,
we can no longer see the stars.
