Farm Shadow – By Kelly D. Tolman

Posted by admin on May 1, 2009

The day the shadow

came, the rabbit froze.

We found the tiny body

like an ice-cream cake,

waiting.

 

 

The shadow blight

spread like pollen on the legs

and wings of black bees;

touching, filling, infecting

matter.

 

 

With green rot in its green

gut, the shadow fell

like silk on the farm.

The chickens flipped

like pancakes on Sunday,

mourning.

 

 

The hands wrought

in shadow from light

to wake the brown cows

who slept the way people

do without black

coffee.

 

 

Steady as a broken heart,

the shadow flits on memory

until the fish inside swim

up the cold pebble path

back to the barn,

burning.

 

 

The shadow left when the rabbit

thawed in the noon darkness,

and the wild fish drowned

in the wake of warm cow

pollen.