The Milk Sick

As I pull the white snakeroot from around the cow tank

the choirboys come sand shoe scuffing:

What they want, they won’t say.

As I bend I show the lazing wester sun my beads of sweat,

my mudhen’s pride.  I need not rise.

The woods once green and full of poke weed--

not yet poison-blood fruited--and turkeys and such.

But now brown herringboned feathers and acorns

and dusty boughs litter the ground:  the boys are gone.

A flutter in the mallow and the lavender mother comes,

dressed in rags like a Cloutie well,

sighing through her roots, her eyes~~

thrumming the air with jewelweed notes sung

soft as London lace chemises tucked deep in black walnut wardrobes.

The hawthorn swells red with berries and the finches~~

Beaks & sweet queried notes & wine dipt feathers

change places against the bark:

A promise of both surfeit and bleak night.

I hear your whistle in some upswept locust limbs.

Am I your touch piece, perhaps,

Your coppery silted delta,

Plugged in your pocket as you wend

Far river wide.

The sky goes bluing, a hazy ice moon rising,

Circled the way I do you

In my dreams,

As I would loose your collar

And close my eyes to bring my lips,

Trembling,

Where first I kissed your neck,

There, below that soft sable of hair

Warm skin for the asking,

For the want of asking,

This sickness

For the silence of small stars

Shining.