josh morison

Egrets

You start visiting on Fridays,

pulling up after dark.  And you say the house is pretty

a few times while we drink.

When you find a pair of old boots

in a sack under the bed, you wear them loud

on the pine floors and out into the field.

We watch the steers, the way they huddle

then how they craze and bawl,

trailed by small egrets that live on them somehow.

From Life

She doesn’t think of augury

when he draws those birds

gathering in a place without hills –

pages of roads and fence lines,

the pointing branches of pecans.

They’re peeling up red shingles

crying here here here through the walls.