[untitled]
Little I through the hills,
the daisies moving beside me. I watch
the cows low the fields, shuffle
their horns, tongue one another
clean. A sun-gap bleaches the details,
each face ink-bled—full blank—whole
caves spilling light. I reach
the barn, my dress flutters the wind;
grandmother said Once, they found a child
here—the head wound
where blood slipped out turned white
as newborn bone. I stay
though nothing—the barn
arctic quiet, old pails empty
of milk—but opulence
hanging from the eaves, the sun
sliding over the floor
clean doors of light.
A plum tree shivers in the glade—
the air holds vigil while the plums
ripen. Once more
a thing unfinished
grows in the wood. It’s winter
again. A fawn mouths the air
for mother, nuzzles its twin.
The dead keep crawling
to the river, tremble deep
into the current. Dawn
thick awaits something new,
loosens the sky; the plum
tree goes on praying. I—deep asleep
inside myself as ever
a child wombed in the dark—
my hand, blind
as dawn, gropes for a body,
cradles a face.
The morning is born again—
starlings pale into distant
blue. A rabbit’s ear pivots
toward the thicket, each bud
a little clock unbeckoned. Sun
sends deep its thaw, splinters
a frozen pond. Light bends
into water; the ice melts,
gives everything back. A chick
emerges from its shell, opens
its beak, sings the verdant sky—
& I lullabied as if
the song plucked clean my bones.
Kristin Macintyre holds an MFA in poetry from Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado. Her work has been published in, or is forthcoming from, Mud Season Review, Rathalla Review, Sugar House Review, and elsewhere. She is a 2019 Pushcart Prize nominee and serves as an associate editor at Colorado Review. When she is not writing, she teaches freshman composition and drinks coffee in her small garden.