Milk From a Bucket

Milk From a Bucket

Once I ate cites whole
every step a rending tear, tight jaws around fabric of flesh
a whited glare sluicing strangers’ faces dry of all but haste

the every flavor quick forgotten, ground to ash
harvests of cabbage grown from small seed watered
all the dry summer only to be hacked from October mud

throat-slit stems jutting until covered by December snow
joined by memory to the put-up cellar slaw-jars
opened at table for ungrateful mouths.

Once unnamed, inevitable days
foaled in red sky-spew of cloud and fresh smoke
alike as stones, potatoes, cornstalks, hairs in a comb

show the road below the hill knifing open the sky
a grain sack rip slow-leaking possibility,
or the journey that pours it out all at once,

a kicked bucket of milk whiting the barn floor
in the instant before it drains away
through gaps between the boards