and ravens. The neighbor, now dead,
hoarded you
in her freezer—it ain’t food security
if it melts down after two days of the
power gone out. Her husband didn’t
pay the bills.
She chopped rhubarb by the tub-load;
we couldn’t make the dump run ourselves,
had to call it in. The fruit dripped bloody
goo as it
was hauled away. Will you sprout your
thick leaves over the garbage heap?
Will your pink stems poison deer again?
The berries
on the bushes hang thick and fall unpicked.
We pulled the cherries best we could with
our short ladder. Only three rungs up I shook:
vertigo
and the urge to jump. Too runny cherry
jam we turned them into, pitted ‘em with
chopsticks late into the night. We work
to eat but
I wish more of it was like this, pits pop-
ping everywhere, scrambling for them
with sticky hands, and grinning with
our red teeth.
Even the eagle knows what I’m talking
about, picking through the dump heap,
old bacon and french fries hanging
from their beak.
