Toilets and committees vs
rattlesnakes.
The feel of surfaces, birthing a calf, your hand in her belly, or cutting wood. Raw sound of the saw, splinters and shavings, smell of green wood, of sap, cut branches.
No path, until you walk there.
Words shrunk to necessity, commands, announcements.
OK, pine, glue, died, now.
It was a heavy line, a pipe
pushed forward by men and animals
until the ocean stopped it.
Theft of course but driven, a blind mole.
Sunk in the water there, the great forest
falling behind it into lumber.
Yet something is padding the outline of the sea,
desperate, forgotten.
My life already curling, sepia, inward.
Janet McCann (not pictured) is an old Texas poet who has been teaching at Texas A&M since 1969. She is interested in feral cats and abandoned dogs. Her poems and collections are around.
