The hunters / hunters’ wives -- a family’s
worth of plaids encircled
by the pick-ups -- welcome the night’s first stars
/ the looks of the homes the families
dress with Christmas strands and porch-bulbs --
considering what cold must feel like --
and love -- come eye-to-eye -- more keenly
scaled -- remembering
the last of twelve more hours freshly spent. Even
as twi-bright clouds dissolve -- and
the stars -- like chords the later cold delivers on --
appear with the first stars then --
they stand for the moment under it -- there --
as the sumptuous attains -- abstracted
as hearts composed -- at the center of embrace --
without a ceiling overhead -- or
boards below to interfere with. Maybe desire’s
only another way to tell -- a matter
of flesh among -- and only their innocence --
and then -- once they have learned
to meet their nature face to face -- and
once -- when they hear
their voices drop -- having learned
themselves to speak the stars’
least whisperings.
“Breughel Afterward” was printed in Esther, No. 1 of Inwood Indiana. Pick up the paperback from Prolific Press; the stories and poems published online are free to read here.
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