We got home late from today's trip. Much to tell that will have to wait for tomorrow. I am posting a poem I wrote last Fall because there is no time to write a new one tonight, not with these blurry eyes.
A Mystery
It was a week before we found the head.
It had rolled into the dark space
Under the hay bales
Where mouse droppings and
Haydust combine to create
A smell like no other, a smell
Found only in sagging barns
With roofs that are still intact
But foundations that have shifted
To settle more comfortably under the load.
We noticed the new smell first.
That was how we realized the head
Had gone missing.
How had we not noticed?
We were busy, true,
With so much work
To finish before cold weather.
Still, a thing like that.
Someone should have said,
Hey, where did it go?
But no one did and we went on with our work
Of putting the garden to bed,
Getting the fences tight and snug
In case of falling trees
And making sure the feed bins were secure
Against marauding coons and possums.
The smell was like a garbage dump in midsummer
Heat, the methane rising in rivulets of rotting
Vegetation from bagged grass clippings,
Barbecue leftovers and potato peelings.
But this was not the garbage dump
And it was not midsummer.
It was October and the first frost threatened.
We followed our noses
Trusting that faithful organ
To lead us to the offending source.
We found it. Under the hay
In a dark cavern created by unevenly
Stacked bales of summer
It rested in slimy gory glory--
The lost cabbage head.
Liiked the poem. It kept me wondering clear to the end just what it was.
ReplyDeleteBlurry eyes don't sound good.
Hope it's nothing too terrible.
No, just tired, Jessica. we were up at 5am to get on the road by 6, and didn't get home until after 9. So I was s-l-e-e-p-y!
ReplyDeleteI remember you reading this at one of our meetings!
ReplyDelete