After Cecilia Woloch

Surely, there were bears starved by fire.
Beacons of the sky’s assault
and the rain that would never come.

The sound of roosters strangled to death.
Before, only
uninterrupted blue. Rows of ugly

hand-grown carrots—fertilized attempts
at closeness. Before the cougar

hiding beneath the garlic barn. Surely,
the goat woke up knowing

it would not see the sun fall
behind the trees again. Wouldn’t find
its way to the merry-go-round rusted

with apple cores. Isn’t this
proof of something?

What watches us, and the surrealness
of dirt—replacing ten quarter-moons
with hieroglyphs we can’t read back.

Surely, what’s dug by hand
is worth remembering.
Canon of dandelion dust and horse jumps.

Before the root rot. Before
the dog yielded to the broken couch.

Surely, there was a banjo playing.
The clouds, a bruising violence.
Everybody under them.

Lonesome is a resentful night; a rancid
flour sack; a sapling separated

from the crown. The same warning.
Surely the dirt road will lead us out.