I wore his fishing boots rolled at my waist

I waded to the metal box put something in took something out

I still believe getting the mail is the best part of the day my beloved

disagrees he says he has enough bad news but what about finding

among the trash a piece of smooth beach glass today a postcard

a milkmaid’s royal blue emphatic apron

not dulled by many washings not stained by milk or mud the blue

Vermeer’s ennoblement he lets her pour a pure white stream

from the lip of the pitcher into the earthbrown bowl

what’s rich has been set aside for butter or cheese

what’s left enough to soften the week’s stale bread a peasant’s

Sunday supper Milk Soup my father’s favorite

YEARLING

Thanksgiving Day was the day they slaughtered the hog the carcass

hoisted by its heels from the oak the planks across sawhorses holding

the hams the buckets catching the blood the shanks the organ meats

the chunks of white fat for biscuits the feet sunk in brine as the yard-dogs

whined for the leathery ear and my grandmother napped

with the baby always a baby needing a nap

my neighbor

at ninety-six claims she’s never had a nap she has no use for dogs

she used to spend Thanksgiving in the woods getting her deer

and strung it up outside the shed where now droops

head down rack down her son’s deer her knives

stay sharp one year her son brought by

not venison a yearling bear glossy and black

dressed out there wasn’t much underneath its thick coat

a scrawny frame the paws so much like hands she said

when she looked through the window it startled her

hanging there the size of a child

COW

end of the day daylight subsiding into the trees lights coming on

in the milking barns as somewhere out in the yard some ants

are tucking in their aphids for the night behind

hydrangea leaves or in their stanchions underground

they have been bred for it the smaller brain

serving the larger brain the cows eat so we will eat we guarantee

digestion is the only work they do heads down tails up

they won’t have sex they get some grain some salt

no catamounts no wolves we fertilize the fields

we put up bales of hay we give them names

but again this week one breached the fence the neighbors

stopped to shoo it back a girl held out a handful of grass

calling the cow as you would a dog no dice so what

if she recoiled to see me burst from the house with an ax

I held it by the blade I tapped with the handle where the steaks come from

like the one I serve my friend a water sign who likes to lurk