town & country

in an iron yard,
gnomes
stock and fire the urgency
of too many trains
out of this town;

the citys boys
are loving their angels
in accidental haunts

towards which
they will stumble again
and again.

under cloud
poor magic broods,
the corners of drugstores
are beached with survivors
of the heat.

-

in the county we call them
hollows - not the bodies,
nor the well-whiskied fathers
sons
but the beds they make
when their eyes go white -
the earth, the thigh high
greennesess
for their heads.

out here
progress rusts red
on a country yard,
and boxcars knock sentences
deep in our wood -

after the last rattle of throat
among the herd
at the edges of the trembling blades
there is occasion for grazing.

james madison walker

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