Читать книгу Swan Bones - Bethany Bowman - Страница 11

For Jack and Amy

My friend’s husband is gentle.

He takes sugar ants outdoors in spring,

spends spare time learning chords

to pop songs big the year he was born.

But last summer when their pullets began

to disappear, his anger became fuel

for something else—a source: like uranium

for sun power or fission for energy.

He drowned the possum denning

under their porch; chucked its

bloated body in the back field

where they’d once tried to keep bees.

A few days later, the carcass was covered

in vultures. My friend hoped they’d pick it

to bones, didn’t want her kids to know

that like Cain, they’d taken an innocent life.

(The brood was gone without blood

or feathers. Only a hawk could have

accomplished such a thing.)

But the vultures left the dead alone;

apparently hog cholera’s easier to digest

than swollen possum. Husband away at school,

my friend mowed circles around it for weeks.

Maybe next year they’ll try an orchard, a garden.

Their apples won’t be scabby, get crown gall

or fire blight, and the cherry tomatoes—

God they’ll be small and red

and we’ll pop them into our mouths

like atomic fire balls, seeds and juice

exploding, mushroom clouds rising

as we watch the sun go down in the country.