THE RED OX CRASHING THROUGH
A WINDOW

--for Susan McCabe

The woman with four thumbs
Brought the rest of the men
From the road crew
To where the others have lowered the gravid pig
Into a shallow ditch.

The boy who drives ice picks
Into their sand wagons is there
Holding the pig's rope- She says
He is one of two signs from Jesus they have found.

Do they know his luck here, as well as theirs,
Is the crooked path of sand the loaders lose from their wagons?
They are laughed at by the cement mixer
Who knows their load is short
Before they have time to think of it.

It's been a slow growing devastation
To watch their embarrassment
Repeated this week.

The boy has studied The Book of Thel
In a Kiev coat through the darkest snow of the year

And in a letter to a lame aunt
On an oilslick coast he has promised
One day they'll eat smooth hound with lemon
And red wine. They'll know
The significance of the sow's having given birth
To a legless boar.

He has thought to think
Beyond thinking's shortened lamps
Because the woman asks him in Chinese every night
Before bed Where did you leave your silver spaceboot?
Showing him how not every child
Wears their true colors
With their first mask of the night.

Chocolate birds screaming in the machines again.

 

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