Alfalfa

Dane County, Wisconsin

Four doe and the moon shake the forest loose
to torment the alfalfa.
                                          When the dog goes out
to chase them off, he finds a way to wake
some decomposing thing we didn’t know
had ripened in the creek-bed’s silt,
announcing the arrival of July.

This clearing is not called Eternity,
even considering what’s here. No one,
not even us, invaders of the farmhouse,
calls it anything but that far pasture.
And it never comes when we call, feral
as it is, with its corps of volunteer crops:
the progeny of collapsed tomatoes
and here and there some inane stalks of corn.
It exhales mud and fireflies and fog,
...