Allotment: the Mud

Allotment: the Mud

Because he believes it will work

my father shoots a crow

and hangs her loose

on a pole he’s driven into

the edge of the garden

and walks away while the

made dumb bird flaps up-

side down in the wind.  These

are not the teeny cruelties

he’d like for me to believe,

he sees the need of being

the champion of his scattered

seed: corn, peas, even treated

with the finger dying powder

pink and white, serves

the bastards right he’ll say

when I ask is it poison what if

the crows eat them.  I want

to take him down

and ask how long has he been

in the world—long enough

to open the earth every May

or June, split her wide

with his plow and hoe

and bury into her without

asking and cover it over

like it was nothing

nothing at all and grope

in the closet for the box

of shells when the birds

arrive, flocks of them

and half the labor is done

and flown by the time

he’s loaded, and one crow

to show, going cold

as he reaches for her,

the blue of her now transparent

eye reading him, easing

her judgement into him
like a sword falling

from shoulder to shoulder
the weight a shadow he'll carry

for months and months
to come.