faded corduroy trousers
worn a week between washing favorite long-sleeved flannel shirt shedding alfalfa flake from last night’s feeding three a.m. turns the better side of night dark dressing for morning incandescent bulb casting yellow-gray spokes across back porch boots stiff with hardened mud waiting to be laced silhouetted horseflesh sleep as salt lick clear sky visible through orchard trees sprouting spring’s uneven puberty trough water a charcoal mirror scrivening wrinkled stars Big Dipper stretching toward Polaris unbridgeable distances apart red extension cord raveling from barn door to hanging heat lamp warming straw ewe's breath wet and weak as its crowning creation silence a life sign \\// flowing fetal membranes // now death \\ glass bottle capped in rubber nipple working lamb’s mouth with milk-coated finger |