BETWEEN MOUNTAINS GIRL DON’T ECHO

The barn was cold. Icicles off roof slants. Stalks splitting on their sticks. Leaf whispers, wind

caving tin.

My hands were gummy. Gloves on black tarp. Baling rope grips to the fleshy part. Tobacco blood on a radio dial, maple syrup, the handle of a fork.

Cows huddled, their wet snouts dripping, huffed and fogged air. Socks wet above the

rubber boot, hooves through a creek’s thin glaze. Heavy breathing against silence.

California’s to the other side of the world. Man in an outhouse, man in his self-designed

bed-in-a-box. My boy doll, the basement, sawdust.

Supper’s on the table, that black octagon. Peas nestled in mashed potatoes, bird eggs,

down the hatch. I think some voice might spring out, all rust and metal, ring

the blue plate of sky. Green worms falling, snow falling. But none does.

—originally published in Now & Then