I
enter the barn at dawn. Ancient light
filters in beams through slats in long need of repair. Bits of dust and hay are alive and unsettled,
I breathe them, I am part of them, and they of me. You regard me with eyes of either side. You are the color and warmth of the sac-oats
I keep by the stove. Cold wet mornings
demand such sustenance. The larder runs
short this winter, the grounds frozen over again and again. The spring crops will be well fed however we
are not, and this is why I have come.
You
bleat. You trust. I feed you so why
should you not? You are warm under wool
laced with lanolin, I am envious. You
are immune to the gangrenous cold that patiently stretches its fingers up the
rocky cliffs from the dark sea. The wind
laments in sinister dreams all night, every night, calling us out. We cannot sleep, and winter has had its way;
our fortitude raped. My cheeks are raw.
I smell you. Your essence is
visceral. I taste your gamey sweat. I sense your quickening like the ice that
will reign over all tonight; shards of it on the black rocks below.
You are plump.
Your fat will spit on the fire and we shall sleep tonight despite the
banshee sea.
