Cowboy hat curses that his ancestors are ignoring him.
and it reminds me of two years ago when he told me that women were ignoring him,
at Magnolia Bar, on the bus, and in the cemetery -
we’re standing around the skillet at the campfire now
and the yellowed trees are standing at our shoulders.
You need to crane your neck to see them yellowed; down here they’re bare.
Our average age is in the hundreds if we just include them as we count,
so what would that take? a little serving of cornbread and chili at each of their rooty ankles -
This copse was here when we were born and yet it stands in seeming deference now.
A gesture of inclusion might go a long way here -
and while we’re making offering to trees, whatever happened to the gods?
Are they too old and senile to get a take anymore, or are
they laughing at us and turning their bowls over?
I’ll ask that of the women also
if I run into them again, cowboy, but my fields
have been so barren of them,
and I will never build a house and go inside,
not while my belly leaks with limerence or steam rises
from my boot-soles.
I am so angry, so angry, so angry,
he says, and I poke at the coals and keep an eye on the tree line.
Geese and women and gods and trees, you never know what you’ll see walking out of there.
Yesterday and ereyesterday it was just gods and
trees, but two weeks ago a black kitten came out of them mewling
and turned everything upside down like a mighty wave.