Sandra Alcosser

If we wash our legs with frozen water

Watch it rill down hairy flesh – oh the power

Of the body to refresh – to lie down at night

Wake again among harebells and bees, lichen

Speckled boulders, mists of sweet white

Clover – if we cock our pollen hats

Like Leonardo da Vinci and sketch

Riffles come to nurse the thirsty

Rubble, we can lean back, sieve

Our tea among secretive

Rocks – soak away the meanness

Of a year’s duplicity – no one can reach

Us here – no human noise –

A river will gentle the cruelest voice

From under water and under tar

Down from the walls of caves

They came  The biologist made

A circle with her arms

That calf’s heart must have weighed

Twenty-five pounds she said — Deep inside

Each bison there is a bible

Otherwise how could they survive

Our bullets and cliffs

Our cities and flames

Our soups simmering

With the heads of their babies

Each mother grazing patiently —

A ton of flesh made of grass blades