All wren-song breaks upon me like the spells
     enchantresses
will weave. Disguising beauty, rhyming veils
the tragedy of tales
     about brave men who sought to bless

the earth by strength of arms. By day, the song
     of curséd birds
illuminates a maiden, wearing a ring
one of the devil's throng 
     has coiled round her with untrue words. 

Night falls, and oceanic darkness paints
     the landscape black.
Above are sapphire, emerald, golden glints,
yet bone-deep blindness taints
     the view. One only sees his lack.

On one such moonless night, I raised my eyes
     to mark the coal-breathed beast 
whose head, resting upon a virgin's thighs,
obscured my sight 
     to virtues I'd once held but lost. 

Hovering in that dark celestial tent,
     the Dog Star loped
and shook and shed profusely light that sent
down flickering hues. As Advent's
     lights proclaim a king long-hoped-for,

the Dog Star's light described a crown of pine,
     holly, and citrus fruit
whose rind is solstice cold yet warms the one
who eats alone. 
     The pitch of night became a livid blue. 

The creature on the virgin's lap was bound,
     and with a stolen page
of Scripture, I descaled that snake, defined
a circle round
     its neck, and scribed the date this age

would end. Once pocketed, those scales like coins
     shifted and clinked
with every step. I fled to enjoy my gains, 
but I could not. The wrens
     sang bitter songs; all I still lacked

stretched before me in tritone intervals,
     a melody
that I could not resolve with serpent scales;
beyond the ocean's hills,
     beyond the sun, eternity.

When flashes lightning east to west,
will I be twice exhumed,
my tapers guttering and spent 
beside a nameless river
along whose banks in turns the wind
scattered and re-entombed
a prince and excommunicant?

Before the transience of time,
did you foresee my bones
would bear such trowel marks and seem
in that cold air to shiver
as shovels fall like broken seals
or horses’ hooves on stones
that macadam infernal hills?

If time’s corrupting hand deforms
my corpse, breaks up that clay
of flesh as fodder for the worms, 
death's fambles still will waver
when almond blossoms bloom from shards
of castoff pottery,
cast shade enough to shelter birds
for all eternity.

Suppose I pull from out this stone
Of time its golden vein;
Suppose its pale spall falls like dust;
Suppose this dust is opaline
And potent iridescent flecks
Await some light to prismate
The unassuming earth;

And yet suppose in all this darkness
Our perspective is a shadow
Cast upon the present
Such that our lamps best brighten
Shining back on the receding past
Or looking for what is to come
But must occlude all in our grasp;

If I must stand here ignorant
Of all these gifts contained by time,
It does not follow
I should wring each moment as a rag. 
For they, being burnished in my palm,
reveal what hidden fire within them burned
once they're released and pass away. 

And in the velvet dark 
your elf-locked hair
falls from your mother’s braid 
in straylit strands
as light slips through the gap 
under the door. 
Beneath that wilderness 
you harbor thoughts
that you cannot describe—
the shape of night
as static crumples air, 
the lumped duvet
upon your brother’s bed,
the way it moves
to match his troubled dreams. 
What thoughts of me?

If in the sightless depths
you hear my voice,
with tender melody
or fairytale,
may you my secret name
fondly recall. 
For whoso riddles out
that common name,
there are but two upon
whose tongue its strength
falls with full weight on me. 
Forgive my faults. 
Forget, if possible,
the brazen rod
I forged out of that voice,
the indolent,
distracted habits I
preferred sometimes
to gazing on the face
of mischievous joy. 

I saw nine fires move in mystic dance. 
But I was tired. Texting. 
Texting you and too tired
to mark those fires' dance. 
They must have swept
the night sky like fox tails,
crept in kingly color—
a rose plume bloomed violet—
while at my fingertips
a solitary sentence sent 
in half-sleep's silence:
Time's not the prison that you think. 

Time is the clipped and braided wick 
within an oil lamp’s orange glow—
ever burning, ever low.
Whatever man or beast beyond
dim time’s light lies,
it is the darkness that constrains your sight
not the feeble flicker of the lamp.
The timeless dark, oblivion,
would turn eternity to naught
except that time still pulses on.

And in the distant misty dark
nine fires burn as our lights sleep.
Within the chariot of God,
all light’s contained, all fires keep.

Whoever has seen the here and now
has seen eternity. 

The pullet's ruffled feather,
with misdirected quill and vane

where all the rest are interlaid,
the self-same smoothness bears. 

And who beholding a naked bird
could make the feather plucked

return to its rightful place?
Just so, the moments time has lost

are indiscriminately piled
and ready to be stuffed,

anonymous as down,
in pillows unremarkable

except as they affect one's dreams
when comes that endless night. 

Above the clamorous, sandhill-crane-filled river,
a bridal veil of cloud obscures the moon. 
Her lupine face bends toward the earth, a hollow
brightness the immensity of night
can't swallow. 
                         Specks of grey-green light erupt
and blinker out at water's edge, sway
beyond the rushing, silver-bladed river. 
Though across the prowling groomsmen's dogged lips
the Iris-fingered night sweeps her thin digit,
we must not think she holds their peace for us. 
What is a sleeping boy beside his father
to those who keep the hours of the moon?
No wisdom but the desert's scarcity
has trained the ravenous to forego sleep,
persuades the cottonwood, with warped limbs
and winter leaves, to hiss against the winds. 
They do not reck a child's dreams.  

The lantern-eyed coyotes sulk and huff
a stones' throw from our camp,
close enough I see their brazen masks
unshadowed briefly by the glowing bride. 
Like wind-guttered wicks, their tails flash and flick
and they are gone. But you, my son, sleep on.

Somewhere in the underbrush, the pack
of canids pads nearer the dark-plumed river.
There, birds do not sing lullabies—no lies
about how danger darkens other doors
but never ours. They tell the grimmest tales,
describe how earth’s fecundity is sown
and sprouts from broken bone, how fragile shells
must crack; their occupants emerge alone.
The night-eyes glow.
                     A great horned owl muses,
Who? Who ordered violent darkness fall  
on us? Who but the moon, so soon to fade?

The rattling chatter of the crane-call shakes
the night ecstatically—dark teal, dark teal—
a tuneless campanile. A film of blue. 
Blood spilled within the turbid, wolf-moon river. 

For this scant meal of heaven's flesh,
the slinking shades beside the riverbank
concatenate discordant melodies.

You do not wake. 

  Tonight,
the violet waves had slight,
       foam-bearing crests,
       and when you pierced
the water's edge, your skin
  so fair
    reflected falling stars above. 

  Midnight,
the mysterious hours after:
       The speckled light
       danced on your breast
and in your laughing eyes. 
  Brightness 
    offset the dark advance of waves. 

  Twilight's
morning star arrived,
       pleasure-creased
       as age-old prunes,
and left our summer skin
  so cold,
    pale fingertips could not entwine.

I did not use my tongue to form
your body's shape from clay, or bake 

with wasted breath that clay to brick. 
Warm words could not have kept you here. 

They could not carve the canyon's walls
or fill its depths with flowing streams. 

No sediment or speck of dust
exists because I spoke. My tongue

can only taste cinnamon grains,
the skeletons of locusts, wax

from wild bees, and liquor poured 
by former friends. Did I keep them

against their will? I watched each one
without a word. They broke it off

with logic, sound emotionless
serene. As though it'd never been. 

I fear the cold and empty sheets when you
are gone. Into the age-old night,
the primordial spark descended, yet
I feel these cold and empty sheets. When you
have sung your final song, passed through
the veil, who'll keep me warm 'gainst winter's bite?
I'll fear the cold and empty sheets when you
depart into the age-old night.

Ask me not with jackal heart to rise. 
Although the memory is honey sweet,
how could her memory alone suffice?
So ask me not. My jackal heart won't rise
except to curse the god whom I despise
and whom she worshiped until death's defeat. 
No, ask me not with jackal heart to rise
while still her memory is bittersweet. 

She longed to serve before his throne. 
I balked outside the door,
but now I've come to see the one
she gladly serves before. His throne
has for its seat the sun;
the ocean is its floor. 
I gnash my teeth to charcoaled bone 
and weep: Will he restore 
all those who'd serve before his throne,
who plead outside his door?

With empty lamp, improper clothes
I wait. In darkness, Lord,
you'll come, eternal light to those
with empty lamps. Improper clothes
betray me, my unrighteousness expose.
Would you admit me through the door
with empty lamp, improper clothes?
I wait in darkness, Lord.

Beside a crimson fount, the east wind sings. 
Forgotten melodies I knew of old
wash over me about a once-dead king
beside a crimson fount. The east wind's sing-
song voice has split the tomb whence flows a spring
of life. Will I be worthy to behold
His side, whose crimson fount made east winds sing
forgotten melodies? He knew of old. 

The blood of Longinus converted kings
when spilled and caused the blind to see. 
As my eyes dim, I'd be one such. Who brings
the blood of Longinus? Converted kings
and monks got loose with facts while copying
these tales. Can I trust hagiography?
Did Longinus's blood convert those kings?
The gospel said the blind would see...

Unwilling to partake in evil deeds,
no one can drink the cup of heaven's wine. 
With violent hands, ascend the hill that meets
God's will. When you partake in evil deeds,
you walk upon the road down which Christ leads. 
He did not spare himself the cattails nine,
unwilling to partake in evil deeds. 
Now all can drink the cup of heaven's wine.

When the sun set in the west,
the left hand joined the right in prayer;
they met as mirror greeting fist. 
Although the sunset in the west
may paint the sunrise colors east
as disparate, it's the same air. 
So when the sun sets in the west,
may left and right hands join in prayer.

I saw the thrice-graved shade of winter part
in over-mountain-light the sun cast down. 
'Tween Magpies' blue-black wings, white feathered dart,
I saw the thrice-graved shade of winter part.
From dancing milk-thick-air, a mist-caught shard
of light cut thorns to make a gemstone crown. 
I saw the thrice-graved shade of winter part
in over-mountain-light the sun cast down.

Considering the state
I'm in, I'm lucky to be alive. 
I'm headed home, but I'll be late. 
Consider this: I tried to state
my case on the Golden Gate,
"Good officer, these folks can't drive!
Considering the State
I'm in, I'm lucky to be alive."

I built a crooked box, my dear,
to catch a crafty fox. 
My architecture was off, I fear,
building that crooked box. My dear,
the canid bit my rear;
it hurts too much to fix
that crooked box I built, my dear. 
Please catch that blasted fox!

A leopard, spangled like star,
a lion, and a wolf
approach a poet in a bar. 
The leopard spangled like a star
looks at the Florentine, says, "sir,
Hell's second circle...that inn booked full?"
(The leopard spangled like a star
'd been lyin' with the wolf.)

Who keeps the beggar company?
Unrobed or not, the incline that
her shoulders take to greet her neck
is intimately known by me
and spurs an image in my mind
that gestures her totality.
Yet the impressionistic strokes
of fantasy cannot compare
to nature’s work. If she would turn
her face that I might see the truth,
I’d say with the iconoclast
these idols that my mind engraves
defame what is ineffable,
diminishing what they’d preserve.
For none would trade in canvas, stone,
or thoughts having received the flesh
and felt the quickening of blood.
So turn, if you would still be mine,
and let me look upon Justine.

I hope you won’t think me too bold,
but you have not escaped my thoughts
for forty days. I felt this world
was empty as two knocking boats
moored to a dock but meant for sea,
and I, who longed to know the waves,
was stuck on shore with just the breeze
carrying the musk of salty coves 
to ease the drag of endless time.
For it seemed an endless hell to wake
without you, punished for my dreams
of us together these six weeks.
But I have borne my sentence well;
all that was empty, now is full.

And that’s why I feel doubly spurned.
Renouncing love so newly sworn
as one who wills to be love’s slave
means what was sworn could not be love.
For we know love is not a whip
which boasts a forceful thunderclap
then flees back to its master’s hand.
Love is, in ancient testament,
an arrow made of straight-grained ash
that archers stretched on gutstrings old,
and having loosed, they could not leash;
it either found its mark or failed.
Your sonnet’s recitation was
in honor of whim and not of love.

There’s nothing so becomes a man
as stillness and humility.
For when the mind reduced
of self attends to quiet thought,
the cold of winter cannot touch
the soul, though it may shake the bones.

Yet we do not reject the dust
from which our bodies God did form.
This is an image not a husk
that, having trapped th’ invisible,
we rend to free our truer selves.
What God has joined, spirit and flesh,
let none be eager to divorce.

But if his belly seeks to overthrow
its proper master, let him quell
rebellion. For the one who tames
his body finds creation tamed.

The once cursed owl will take its roost
upon his shoulder, serpent lie
with folded fang beside his boot,
Leviathan, for all his fierceness,
need neither hook nor spear as goad
to prick him to the holy will,
and even Death roll belly up,
the god-man’s pet, awaiting word
that he should drop unbodied man
into Life’s palm. 
                              Don’t be deceived.
That deadman’s soul will not be flung
to some far-distant prison, barred
from earth and heaven. He will walk
among his friends and enemies
in this, God’s kingdom, close enough
that, in the twinkling of an eye,
the holy dead may be transfigured.

In darkness come 
                                            the damning drums.
Grimsung dümsong 
                                              dædlung brim-tongue. 
The bellows blow, 
                                         the bronze bull glows,
The tainted Topheth
                                                      priests intone:
Grimsung dümsong 
                                              dædlung brim-tongue. 
The sons of Hinnom 
                                                 swear and swoon
Above the pulsing
                                                drumbeats’ boom. 
Grimsung dümsong 
                                               dædlung brim-tongue.
The swaddled ones 
                                                  wail no welcome. 
Their mothers moan, 
                                                 Milcom, Milcom,
For fertile fields, 
                                               we’ve sown in fire,
Incinerated 
                                                     sons men sired,
Whose deaths you sealed 
                                               as double-doomed; 
Vouchsafed for violence: 
                                               starvation loomed. 
Grimsung dümsong 
                                               dædlung brim-tongue.
Oh, giver of gifts, 
                                            you gave us drought,
Revoked our daughters, 
                                          now douse our doubt.
We’re thirsty, thin,
                                         and threshed. 
Whoring ourselves we hoped,  
                                     that harrowing the flesh
Of our flesh to gods foreign,
                                      their fires might soothe 
Our groans. See our regret?
                                 We'll grant that we're due 
The ash of Ge Hinnom 
                                           and our empty arms,
But cleanse us with hyssop
                                           cure us with storms. 
Unleash the latter rains. 
                                            Leaven these tombs.
Oh God! Forgive us!
                                         Again, fill our wombs. 
Hallow these lips
                                 heavy with apostate hymn:
Grimsung dümsong 
                                    dædlung brim.

Three days were hardly time enough to run
a notice in the Courant’s classifieds
or post crude signs around the village let
alone to organize and price the goods
Cal hoped to peddle from the ranch, but Cal
was young and vigorous and fueled in turns
by indignation for his step-mother’s
disdain for what his father’d worked to give
them both, and by a sense that, if the ranch
were saved, it might somehow dispel the claims
which Merle had, Cal believed, unjustly levied
against his dad. Cal tacked the bulletins
quite artlessly on noticeboards, stanchions,
and even roadside firs such that no one
in town could say that they knew not the breadth
of Cal’s desperation the sale succeed.

The papers that remained pinned to the trees
along the road after a half-week’s worth
of rain bore ciphers unintelligible
and strange as runnels carved in porous rock
when ‘top the damp needles of Douglas firs, 
a married couples’ carriage jounced and lurched.
The dame, though she had seen Cal’s notice in
The River Courant, mentioned nothing to
her husband of the sale, and yet the man,
being somewhat a student of distaff
psychology, assumed his wife was bound
by her biology to undertake
with pleasure the perusing of a dead
man’s goods. And so, against her will, she found
herself a’bouncing down a shaded lane,
got up with a memento mori brooch
that snugged the high-neck dress her husband said
she ought to wear, as though she gave a damn
about the woman who’d profaned her life
by throwing it indecently away.

Her husband didn’t seem to mind that they
were on a jaunt into the shadowed vale
of death, a credit not to bravery,
she thought, but ignorance, some ill-conceived 
idea the covered lane would open up
beyond the dim limbs of the crowded trees
to something other than an ashen sky,
so she and other wives might socialize.

It may be cloudy, but at least it’s dry,
he said. Weather like that encourages
a man to take his family down a ways.
You think we’ll see the Robinsons about?

He looked quite satisfied, as was his way
when he perceived his intuitions had
secured his wife merriment more than they
were generally afforded. She had not
the heart to take from him so rare a pleasure.

Never can tell, she said. They might be by.
And I do not suppose we’re like to see 
anyone less than we have seen so far.

That last, in jest, yet washed the mirthful lines
from off his countenance and left no stain.
Knowing no further words to pull him from
the placid oblivion of his retreat,
they rode in silence toward the Grant estate.

And there it was, and there upon the hill
a single horse grazing beneath the pile
of coal-like clouds that tumbled through the heavens,
and there their neighbors carts and cars—at least,
their absence was a presence in itself;
the carriage rolled into an empty yard.

And as her husband trudged around the cart,
noting no doubt the certain solitude 
they would enjoy about the property, 
the woman sighed, discreet as any wife.
The man said, They might yet be by, and she
demurely took her husband’s hand and clutched
and lifted up her dress’s crow-black folds
so she, with outstretched leg, might place her foot
in mary janes upon the spongy earth.

She couldn’t help but wonder as she gazed
upon the house, could door or lock restrict
a spirit bent on seeping through a home?
Perhaps the ill-intent that poisoned Merle
infected these possessions now for sale.
What use had she for goods whose ownership
produced, at best, a feeble argument 
for life and might, at worst, suggest she draw
a bath and, for good measure, draw a knife
across her wrists? Perish the thought that she,
a wife who’d failed to fill her husband’s home,
should make it emptier, depriving him 
of the only love he might rightfully give.

Mounting the porch’s steps, she paused, withdrew
her fingers from her husband’s grasp, and turned
back to the cart, back to the grumbling sky,
the spires of trees, the vacant, packed-dirt road.
She did not meet her husband’s eyes as he,
descending steps, waited for her to speak.

I don’t believe I’m brave enough, she said,
to step inside. There’s something not quite right.
And you’re the only one who’s unaware.
Make no mistake, there’s not a soul in town
would take their family to a place like this.

Eyes asquint against the gray-glare clouds,
her husband gestured toward the road and said, 
I find myself suspecting much the same.
Coming from out between those trees, I got 
a lonelier feeling than I ever had.
Desolate feeling. No, I don’t suppose
many a visitor will wander down.
But that’s the thing. This emptiness.
Somehow it’s that that don’t feel right to me,
and all the more I’m feeling drawn inside. 
The boy’s alone, so who are we to hide?

When put like that, how could the woman flee?
She faced the paneled door, took husband’s hand,
ascended porch, inspired deeply as
the bronze doorknob rotated, latch unclicked,
and door swung open.

                  Women’s clothes were hung
from every railing, every arm and back
of chair—the couch a meadow overrun
with red anemone and violet dresses,
lily-white blouses, marionberry skirts,
and yellow gloves the woman recognized
from when she’d happened to see Merle in town.

The man pulled out his billfold, handed her
four bills, five dollars each.

                                             We can’t, she said.

But the man winked and walked away, so she,
swallowing her astonishment, just tucked
the bills into a pocket hidden at
her waist, and entering the crowded room,
she thought how she might spend her money best.
How could she make complete her husband’s joy?
Shyly, she laid her hand upon a blouse
of silk, long-sleeved with no embroidery,
whose rounded collar bore a lavalliére.
Would he delight to see her dressed in this
or think her vain as Herman’s peacock was
strutting around the barn, dragging its tail
through cow manure, yet posturing like a prince?
What might a wife worthy of Solomon
descry among these prodigalities?
A pendant lamp, portraits, a statued mare,
a table made of glass, a vase of stone…
Would an armoire, buffet, or wingback chair
transform their house somehow into a home?

A shelf beside the kitchen passage bore
a jewelry box—black-lacquered, cherry blossom
inlays on front—the lid of which was open,
slanted just so. Implicit light within 
it shone. Her twenty dollars were, of course,
an insufficient sum for jewelry such
a box was destined to contain, and yet
the woman could not fight its gravity.
It pulled her close and tempted her to peek
inside its lid. Instead, a minor act
of résistance, she slid open its drawer
to see what bottom-shelf accoutrements
it held—perhaps a sterling chain was not
beneath Merle’s dignity—but it was empty.
Vacancy likewise filled the drawer above,
and this diminished view of Merle Grant’s wealth
made less resistable the upper hatch,
the opening of door already cracked.

A coil of pearls so long its doubled strands
could be twice-wrapped around one’s neck there gleamed,
and at its ends a star-crowned maid pursued
a fish’s tail—her own; with arms outreached,
her bending body formed a golden clasp.
The woman knew at once this necklace was
the token of a mismatched, desparate love.

Just then the orphan slammed the back door, saw
the woman through the passage, tipped his hat,
and murmured, Morning, as he lay his axe
against the wall. The woman was surprised
how young Cal looked despite his tragedies.
She watched him run his hands under the tap
and splash his face, and as he toweled off,
the revelation of his tender mouth
wrenched at her heart. What little graciousness
she felt toward Merle was dashed against a stone:
her own forsaken hopes. If pearls and clothes
won’t stay a woman’s self-directed knife,
surely a child implies a gift so great
a woman’d sacrifice her death for life.

Gazing on him begot forgetfulness,
and from the woman’s often empty hands
the golden sea maid’s pearly chain still draped
as he approached and nodded awkwardly
and said, I don’t know how to price that thing. 

It was a moment fore she puzzled out
this frank admission, but remembering
the precious necklace whose cream-colored pearls
had nearly disappeared against her skin,
she gently laid them in the lacquered case,
careful the strands not overlap, and left
the lid as she had found it. Blushing, she
stepped back and pressed her hands into her dress.

Beautiful piece.

                                     It is that, the boy said.
But what does beauty cost? In pretty things
I’m drowning handsomely, but what they’re worth
is lost on me. I know just what a man
would pay for any horse, the lowest price
that I could bid and not insult the seller,
but women’s clothes…You reckon that that necklace
is worth a good deal?

                                       Yes, she said. A good
deal more than I can spend.

                                            He pursed his lips
and scoffing said, So much for beauty then.

He tried, conversing with his neighbor’s wife,
to be polite, to with his small-talk make
it seem his thoughts felt no divide, but she
could tell his mind attended to a wound
he had no power to staunch. Why should this boy,
with downy facial hair that testified
against his height’s false claim to manhood, have
to grapple with a loveless woman’s spite?
She wished, if she could rewrite history,
that he had filled her womb, been born to them
whose seeming curse of humble means at least
could spare him loss as measureless as this.
But God withheld this boy from her, was drawing
the boy still further from her grasp. She knew
with certainty this chat would be their last.

He told her, if she needed anything,
he’d be out back, and made to step away.
But with a boldness that surprised herself,
the woman grabbed the child’s workworn hand
and pulled it toward the tresses of her dress
where her thin fingers found and fished the bills
with which her husband had entrusted her
from out her secret pocket, pressed them as
a gift into his palm, and over top,
folded his fingers. 

                                         Cal discretely spread
the bills to note their sum. She watched him puzzling
out her beneficence, considering
the debt an act of grace confers on its
recipient. His eyes moved from the floor
and up the black bombazine of her dress,
rested upon the brooch, discerned the dull,
coin-silver setting, settled on the box
and necklace she had held. Nothing’s worth more
than what a person might give to secure it.
Lacking a market, pearls are little more
than sand, an irritant compounding in
the hand. 

              Why don’t you take that necklace, ma’am. 

An earnest furrow creased the young man’s brow.
She understood the urge to settle odd
accounts, admired too that Cal was moved
to pity her and set a poor maid’s worth 
above a hundred pearls or more. But what
is felt one moment vanishes the next;
when generosity has lapsed, a man
resents the object of his charity.
Rare is the man whose grip on wealth is light
enough its absence doesn’t lead to spite.
Better to leave an innocent desire
unmarred, if unfulfilled, than to condemn
as false philanthropy the gifts of men.

Your offer’s kind. Don’t think me rude, she said,
if I refuse. It’s just that I was raised
that women weren’t to buy such things as these
themselves. A younger gal than me deserves
this necklace anyway. Keep it for her.

She’d left Cal speechless once again, and as
she turned to join her husband by the stairs,
she said, Good luck out there. She crossed the room
without a second glance at skirt, blouse, lamp,
or cabinet, not even once she’d hooked
her husband’s arm. 

                                They took the steps as one,
and reached the horses fore her husband saw
her arms were bare.

                           You’re leaving empty-handed?

The kind of things that tempt women like me
are not for sale, she said lifting her dress
and climbing into cart.

                                                    Sweet mystery,
her husband said and, driving from the yard, 
Still have that money then?

                                                      I surely don’t.

⸻⸻⸻

The sky looked menacing as hell as night
came on and Cal led Wren back to the stables.
Over the horse and boy it glowered like 
a god with bloodlust unappeased—perhaps
the very god whose herd had met Cal’s gun.
Sheet lightning flickered red and cast the hills
in blood as Cal rubbed Wren and tossed a blanket
over the mare, again as he approached
the house and scooped the steel logbasket up,
full as it was with wood he’d never use.

What more propitiation was required
beyond the contrite heart with which the boy
had made his hecatomb most baffled Cal.
In preacher’s tales, the righteous ones are warned
before a deluge plunges earth beneath
a rising sea, and wayward prophets meet
the storm knowing full well the sacrifice
divinity demands—the wicked tossed
into the violent waves of their design.

Cal set the logs beside the kitchen stove.
The coals burned low. A subtle heat. Dim glow.
The front room’s lamplight spilled through doorway’s eye,
mangled the darkness, pinned it to the wall. 
With back against the opposing counter’s edge 
he studied the struggle of the dying flame.

Less than a tenth of what Merle owed the bank
had Cal recuperated in the sale.
Besides the woman in the plain black dress,
a hermit living in a lean-to shack
of fallen timber set within a creek-
side niche was Cal’s sole other customer.
He didn’t ask what need the hermit had
for ninety-dollars worth of women’s clothes
nor how he’d funded this expenditure.
Whatever fate Merle’s personals might meet,
it’d be no less than what the churl deserved.

The kind of sorcery it’d take to make
a mortgage’ worth of money disappear
this far from any major thoroughfares
mystified Cal as well. That money—gone.
Gone, too, the incidental cash they kept;
Merle’s funeral expenses had been paid
two weeks before her death, and more than that,
she’d spent a hundred eighty extra for
embalming services, as though she were
an Egyptian pharaohess. She’d robbed him blind
and written him a letter claiming love.
She was the one inciting the gods’ wrath,
the one who’d left no recourse but to pray.
There was no ship. No body for the waves.

When John came in the front door of the house,
the couch was bare; the end tables were cocked,
chaotic remnants of a livid dance
enjoining youthful passion with a lost
inheritance; loosed through the door, the wind
snaked and ensorcelled vagrant paper scraps
to wind and drift in its imperious breath.
John closed the door, but cold did not relent,
not even as the woodstove came in view.
The kitchen was empty too, but through the glass
above the porcelain sink, he spotted Cal
and all the missing furniture and clothes.

Distinguishing the roar of wind from roar
of flame as John joined Cal beside the blaze
required skill that John did not possess;
suggested in the fire’s twisting tongues,
a deadly marriage of the elements.
Given the choice between the cold or heat,
the boy took off his boots to warm his feet.

I see the sale went well, he said.

                                                             Real well.
But don’t you go and treat me different now.
The kinda success I’ve had’s a fluke of luck.
You speak to your father?

                                    Yeah.

                            Cal’d thought John might
elaborate, but since John held his tongue,
Cal had to force the issue: What he say?

He didn’t think it such a good idea.

The hell he didn’t. He don’t think I’m good
for it?

                  Not in so many words, said John.
Don’t take it as a judgment ‘gainst yourself.
Look at it from my dad’s perspective, Cal.
A loan from him’s just adding debt to debt.
My dad can’t float that kinda money long. 
You still would have, the first of every month, 
the bank expecting you to send their check. 
Let us assume you save the house: What then?

I do just what I’ve always done—trade horses.

To trade a horse you need a horse to trade.

You think that I don’t know that, John? said Cal.

You’re talking like you don’t.

                                                A stiff wind blew. 
John pulled back on his boots, rocked toward the flames,
and stood with Cal, watching Merle’s goods consumed.
Holstered at hip, the boy’s revolver hung.
Cal felt the grip, the cylinder, its grooves
and he recalled the kickback and the guilt
but duller now.

                               Suppose we rob the bank.

Fixing Cal with reproachful eyes, John said,
You aim to pay the bank from their own vault?

Just rendering to Caesar Caesar’s due.

You want a free trip to the county jail,
hell, I will take you there myself, and you
can skip the teller’s line. You plan to waltz
in there tomorrow morning, stick ‘em up,
then plop the money bag back on the sill
that afternoon and say, Pardon me, sir,
where can I find deposit slips?

                                                 Good point,
said Cal. Maybe I’ll send you in instead.

Har, har. 

                      Relax. I’m just pulling your leg.

Out to the east, a distance that outmatched 
the thunderclaps, the mountain wore a crown
of clouds that pulsed with intermittent light.
And though the gusting wind teased cloth and flame,
the massing dark above dropped little rain
upon the boys. It sizzled on the grass
before the bonfire blaze. It spotted sleeves,
beaverfelt hats, and jeans but didn’t damp
their clothes just yet. 

                      John asked, What happens now?

They take the house. And then in ninety days,
try to recoup at auction if they can.

If the bank can, said John.

                                          Sure. And I hope 
they have as good of luck as I had selling
this woman’s property today.

                                                          He turned
and headed toward the horse stalls. Bonfire red
washed over Cal in waves of light. His shade
upon the stable rose and sank and surged
and drowned the turgid night.

                                            Where will you go?

This was the question Cal himself had spent
the last few hours considering. What cure
was there? In what direction did it lie?
He felt the crosshairs of divinity
tracking his every move, the burden, too,
of Merle’s transgressions which conscripted Cal,
unless he appeased some god, to be an exile.
And so, he’d packed his possibles—rope, wire,
lantern and oil, some modest rations, clothes—
and prepped his saddlebag before he’d dragged
the last of Merle’s goods outside and lit the torch
that would presage the conflagration and,
he hoped, his own redemption. 

                                           Grab that shovel.
I’ll tell you on the way.

                                          Two silhouettes 
depart in amber dark. Two shovels clink 
in Wren’s travois while two muttering poles 
drag through wet grass. Two shades, diminishing,
jitter against the wheat-thick timberline.
And still the chattel of Cal’s stepmom burns.
The fire gnaws on graying shelves; it topples 
a hutch, reduces it to charcoal strips. 
Merle’s clothes lie in a flashing, smoldering heap.
Each thread of silk and cotton is a wick
along which sparks must glim and race on gyres
that widen in grim perpetuity. 
Even the lacquered jewelry box’s black
is fiery bright with its top doors thrown wide,
exposing emptiness: no pearls inside. 

They flit from bud to flower and bask
in glory rising from the East.
They wait beside the verdant leaf
on petals yellow feathers match 
to bow, in orans raise their wings,
and hover where the Spirit hid
within the formless dark; they bid
daylight illume created things. 
In antiphon, the finches chant
their sunflower hymns, the ancient ones
that prove their golden plumage comes
as image bearers of that plant,
then prostrate, on crossed branches kiss
the firstfruits of their eucharist.

Hear the knocking of the wrench on flange,
the ting and slide of bolts that dropped and rolled
atop the bathroom’s basket-woven tile,
the groans of teenage boys straining ‘gainst
the white enamel cast-iron tub until
the gasket, falling from the pipe, flopped 
onto the floor. The progress made, the boys
observed, was just three inches, judging by
the separated pipes. The younger boy,
with parted hands as gauge of doorframe’s width,
measured the tub, stepped back, and shook his head.

You sure you need this thing got out? asked John.
Hell of a job to get it down the stairs.

Cal glanced into the belly of the beast.
Where once the bottom of the tub had been
a brilliant white, pink stains like dunes formed round
the drain, distorted aureoles of blood.
But worse than this, Cal couldn’t shake the sight
of Merle’s pale body, still as winter frost,
in tantalizing specificity
each time he passed the sunlit tiled floor.
When Cal had stood beside the casket at
his father’s wake, he saw the marks of age
upon his face. Merle’s corpse showed something else.

It’s gotta go. I don’t care what it takes.

They bent again to grip the curled edge
and heaved the tub another inch or so
toward the bathroom door. 

                                        Cal should have burnt
the letter long before he’d ever read
his step-mom’s final words, for now her voice
around his mind’s palate swirled with notes
of customary bitterness. On this
he quickly could grow drunk, and damning Merle,
he swore he’d make a holocaust of all
she loved and pictured leaping flames above
her pile of worldly goods bright on the lawn.
But in the blackout nights of wrath when Cal
lay sprawled across the emerald couch downstairs,
another voice of Merle’s would come and this
with tenderness—infuriating love
so subtle one’d forget it’d ever been. 

Now by the time the boys had got the tub
away from the wall and lined up with the door,
John's sweat had plastered locks of hair across
his forehead, overcome his brow, and struck
him blind. John paused, dabbed shirt to face, while Cal
against his better judgment thumbed Merle's note,
that relic of the dead which he kept close
and folded in the pocket of his slacks.
With that brief touch, the woman’s ghost appeared
as bare as she had left the world, and though
the movements of her mouth were soundless, Cal
discerned the message she proclaimed, her last
epistle writ for none other than him. 

He tensed his grip upon the cast-iron tub,
as if in focusing his energy 
he might dispell the lovely wraith, and shoved
that mass of iron toward John, still unprepared,
who started hollering that his toe was pinched
beneath the claw-foot beast. The boy fell back
and pitched a fit that might, Cal thought, disperse 
the dead for miles around the ranch. Cal rushed
around the tub and forced it off of John,
who took off boot and sock to check his foot
as Cal slid to the ground, his back against
the vanity, and sighed. 

                                       Her ghost was gone,
but Merle’s incanted words still lingered there.

How did this ranch become my life, she wrote,
when all my girlhood dreams were of the sea?
Didn’t my family and my friends attest
a sapphire crown was my sure destiny?
A beautiful, unblemished merchant queen
ruling the waves beside her merchant king?
And gazing in my mirror, I knew its truth.
Yes, I could feel the silk upon my skin,
could see ultramarine reflecting back
from unaverted eyes (how could they take
their eyes from me unless to bow their heads
in grave respect for a goddess of the sea?),
could taste the wine from Sangiovese grapes,
taste mandarins and such exotic things.

Then I met him. 

                          How confident he was
that any man crossing the ceaseless blue
must be a fool. My heart’s desires, he said,
would not be found beneath the waves, for waves
were but the skin of death’s domain and hid
the bones of men lulled to an early sleep
by ocean’s fatal lullaby. Indeed,
that which I most desired, he claimed, would come
from out the land itself, whose veins are gold
or near-enough-to-gold, though black, to trade
for precious things. 

                              I told him I would like
a string of pearls. 

                            Of course you would! he said
and promised that a landed man could send
his servants to the sea for luxuries—
and those but few—that land could not provide.

And so he told me of the verdant tracts
where species of grass flash like gemstones in
the gentl’st wind. Of how the rolling hills
outmatch the roiling sea since they are signs
not of the imminence of death, but peace.
Of how few owned quite so much land as he.

Now, listen closely, Cal, for I was near
your age and vain (I’m sure you’ll think me still)
and gullible as Eve when I arrived
to watch, beside your father, hired men
with arms and faces slick with blackened gold
scurrying 'round colossuses of wood;
the derrick testified to an oil seep,
to riches without end, and all for me.
Abdicate your claim to a shifting throne
atop the unruly sea, it seemed to say,
and rule this man’s stable barony.

Your father kept from that initial seep
only enough to slake a young wife’s dreams—
a duchess's trousseau if set against
the country wives with whom we always dined,
but meagre when compared to tens of thousands
spent constructing derricks greedy for
the oil your father hoped his land contained.
A fortune gambled; fortune never gained.

How many months did happiness, though false,
indwell our home? I see it clearly now:
Your father’s bid, espousing romance, hid
an ill-conceived design at husbandry.
A child needs a mother, true. But how
could I at seventeen consider you,
a four-year old, my son? A mother? No.
Where parents wield authority and mold
their child beneath their unrelenting hands,
the two of us were given surer bond: 
I was a first-born daughter, you my late-
born brother, choosing for ourselves to love
or hate. Since I was not your origin,
I knew a greater honor would be mine
should you decide to view the world as I.
And so I tried to make you love me as
a sister does. Do you recall how I
at first delighted you? Swinging you round
and through the waist-high grass, so evergreen
it seemed it’d never die? Laughter inspired
by faces made right under Father’s nose?

I used to smile. I did. Before the black-
gold veins of mother earth evaded us.
No other seep produced more than a day.
I didn’t need to see the bank accounts
to know throwing good money after bad
for worthless derricks meant we’d soon be just
another ranch. The final derrick drilled 
exhumed a spring, a subterranean stream
that gushed until the flooded ground became
my own forsaken sea but fouled by oil.
And as I watched the iridescent blooms
rippling atop the wind-blown water’s skin,
the breeze brought in a haunting melody,
a soothing song with which I had been known 
to hum my childhood self to sleep, a tune
cut short, a single rumbling note sustained 
by oceanic lungs, condemning me
poetically, as goddesses are wont 
to do when scorned by mortal vanity.

The day we tore those wretched derricks down,
your father, to remit his final debt,
produced the promised double-strand of pearls. 
How odd it felt to clasp around my neck
the symbol of my hoped-for royalty
but made manacle now and teth'ring me
to horseshit friends, locked in a horseshit town.

I thought my pain was evident and hoped 
sympathy for your cherished sister might 
endear your heart to me, that we might stand 
against your father’s bullish silence, force 
open his eyes so he would see our joy
diminished day by day. But yours did not.
You relished in the land your father owned,
the stench of horses, and the sun which marked
you with your father’s brand, for you were made
a captive of this ranch, the same as I.
And I resented how you couldn’t see 
your reins, while I still wore the bridle bit.

The ocean, though, had not forgotten me.
And while its tune had turned from lullaby
to song of imprecation, I took heart
even in this, my reprimand. Some day,
I thought, this curse might find its cure, and my
penitent lips would kiss her shores when out
of exile I returned. Thalassa! How
I’ve longed to see your streets again, to hear
the rapture of the waves against your wharf,
to smell the incense of the sea whom I
incensed when I forsook her waters in
my vanity. Thalassa, I repent.
Such was my refrain those nights as I 
awaited jubilee—I repent.

But were we free, Cal, when your father died?
His death meant bitter quiet in our home,
emptier rooms the better to display
how far estranged my little brother was.
For I still saw in you, as I do now,
that boy with brown, straw-woven hair, who brought
me chorus frogs to name or, as I hung
the laundry, doused me with a bucket to
entice a chase that’d end in ticklish glee.
No animosity or petty fight
protracted through the years could shake our bond, 
devoted as I was to this idea:
Our souls, dear Cal, were forged the same. This ranch,
this town, could never circumscribe our hopes.

To live here is to live alone. Can you
imagine life wed to the homely girls
these country dames produce? Your mother must
have been the last fair face above a pair
of breasts from Hatch to Wadsworth county line.
So I considered how we might escape,
how I unveil the glamours of the sea.
Thalassa gave her beauty prodigally
to girls with sea-bright eyes (like mine) and hair
that falls in golden waves or darkling tides
so pure they hold a star-sprent gleam,
with waists that, Cal, I swear, the Venus could
not boast a form the eyes would find more pleasing.

But what a fool I was, believing I,
who claimed the ocean’s glory for myself,
could break the curse that had transfigured me
into a ranchhand’s widow. Juno changed
Callisto to a bear, and did that maid
regain the form that had so tempted Jove?
Below Polaris hang her ursine legs,
forbidden rest within those cradled waves.
None can revoke the judgments of the gods. 
The plum-dark ocean sings, will sing, and sang
its charge against me as its breakers pulled
Thalassa to the deep and blued the cheeks
of all her gorgeous daughters, save for me.

But do not think me spared because I lived.
While I shovel manure, scrape afterbirth
from knock-kneed colts, and watch black bruises form
beneath my once elegant nails, on thrones
of pearl my sisters reign with coral crowns.
Whereas my body in a filthy pit 
will rot and none bring me to memory,
the sea exalted them; their tragic deaths
sailors will sing each time they pass that port
no less immortal than Atlantis since
it was likewise submerged. I am destroyed;
they are reborn. And yet, though I submit
to obscurity in death, let my demise
bear fruit. For though your father’s passing failed
to break our chains, I set you free, dear Cal.  

There’s nothing for you here. There never was. 

Soul of my soul, go find your destiny,
and when the ocean sings, remember me.

But Merle was no emancipator. Cal
felt no relief dismantling the tub.
He felt about as free as Sisyphus
and wondered what would end the tasks Merle’s death
had set before him. 

                                First, his father's gun
became a stone to mark his hand like Cain's
with fratricide (for all akin to Wren 
were kin to him). Each time the boulder dropped, 
there was another stall, another brother 
horse to raise his hand against. A spire 
of flame brightened their marble eyes, mirrored
the Smith & Wesson's muzzle flash, and quenched
to lifeless black. Two days his shovel broke
the ground and sparked against the flinty bones
of mother earth to dig a common grave. 
It took a day for him and John to grab 
their hooves and drag their bodies from the stalls
and roll them, one by one, into the pit
from first light till the sun was tucked behind
the mound of dirt. And then another day
rising before the dawn to bury them. 

Still Merle was wrong. Escaping from this ranch
had never crossed Cal’s mind. Instead, he thought
erasing her, however long that took,
would be the better course. The vision Cal’s
father had sold to Merle—triumphs of grass
first green then gold against the silver sky—
was not an aftermarket part of Cal
but was inborn. His early memories
conflated nature with the mother he
had lost. She’d taken him each dusk to sit
in stillness as the vesperites would flit
and feast, and as she watched the western sky
saturating from indigo to black,
Cal watched her features disappear, dissolve
into the land she loved. She must reside
here still, he thought. How could he leave her side?

No ghost of Merle’s would chase Cal from his home.
And so he rose to exorcise the tub
with John once more attired for the rite.
They laid their hands upon the bath and said
each one a silent prayer, but just as they
began to lift, there was a knocking at 
the stairs, the shuffling footfalls of two men 
in bowler hats and suits. They came right to
the bathroom door, as though they knew just where
Cal could be found. These men were so alike
they could have traded eye for eye or tooth
for tooth and been no less themselves. Each wore
a patterned ascot tucked into his vest,
had sideburns of white hair along his jowls,
and bore concise lips out of which no spare
word might escape. Except the hands of one
were fastened round a leather case, the next’s
around the scrimshaw handle of his cane,
Cal would have thought his vision duplicate.

Knock, knock, said John. And who the hell are you?

We are the bank, said the man with the cane.

Cal looked at John and rolled his eyes and said,
Well, shoot. Then let yourselves right in. But just
to get ahead of things, I wouldn’t count
on selling me nothing the bank has got.
I do despise a loan. My father taught 
me that. What is it brings you to my home?

And with a solemn smile the other said,
A matter of some sensitivity.
We’re looking for relations of Merle Grant,
regrettably deceased. Would that be you?

Cal spat into the tub and shook his head.

She was my father’s wife. Nothing to me.

I see no love was lost twixt you in death.
Nevertheless, to the extent that you
presume to be this ranch’s heritor,
the designation of relation fits.

The other man then placed his leather case
beside the sink, released the latches, and
retrieved some documents. He spoke before
turning to Cal.

                       We say presume to be
because there is the issue of the lien
against this house. Unless that debt is paid—

My father owned this place outright, said Cal. 
For men so smartly dressed, you sure don't keep
yourselves apprised of basic facts before
you barge into a stranger's house. A man
these parts is like to draw a pistol on
folks who darken his door as soon as not. 

Our underwriters were of course aware
your father owned this residence outright,
and they confirmed the income of this ranch
before they lent against its equity. 
Which is to say, the bank now holds the note,
and more than that, the loan is in default. 

I'm telling you, my father never took
no banker's loan, said Cal. 

                                             The bankman, with
his documents in hand, approached the boy
and licked his thumb for better purchase on
the page and, as he flipped through till he found
the signatory sheet, he said, We are
all firm believers that the written word
has power. Though sticklers over terms, we will
not quibble immaterial facts except
to set the record straight. Your father, once
upon a time, when his designs were to
establish for himself a barony,
certainly did secure himself a loan.
A loan which he quite hastily repaid.
But that is of such little consequence
to the matter at hand, we’ll now move on.

The man had found the page and laid it on
the vanity so Cal might verify
its applicant. 

                     You would not disagree
the undersigned was authorized to take
the mortgage, said the man holding the cane.

His father was nowise affixed by word
or implication on the deed, and yet
Cal recognized the flourished script. The same
delicate hand that had composed the note
Cal carried with him night and day had signed
her name—the M, its curving horns so like
a crescent moon’s, gave way to miniscule,
elaborate but compact; the aspect of
the G implied a different lunar phase,
somehow apocalyptic as it waned
above the remnants of Cal’s family name.

Dammit all, Merle, Cal muttered. Every bit.
How far behind was she on payments then?

The loan originated six months past.
Since then no single payment has been made.
The final notice of foreclosure was
received, and we have verified receipt,
three weeks before the borrower passed on.

The man held out the signed and dated note
preempting any argument from Cal.

The bank has not been uncompassionate.
In light of recent circumstances, we've
deferred the requisition of this house
and all its land, and made provision for
an heir, that should he choose to remedy
the loan by bringing those missed payments up
to date, he shall thereby assume the loan
as it was underwrit to one Merle Grant.

Six months is quite some time, said Cal. Do I
dare ask the sum that I should keep in mind?

The principal and interest every month
is three hundred three. With escrow, then,
Two thousand eight hundred and eighty-one
dollars and fourteen cents, the man replied.

John, who had remained in silence since
first apprehending that the presence of
these men foreboded ill for Cal beyond
what could be solved with scoffing words or at
the barrel end of Cal’s dead father’s gun,
could only say, Good God. And likewise Cal
blanched at the sum, inwardly cursing Merle.

The bankman packed his leather case and passed
his twin into the hall. The one who held
the scrimshaw cane looked at the boys and said,
You have three days. Whatever you’ve removed,
be sure that you replace. The tub conveys.

And then they stumped back down the stairs and out
the door, which swung and slammed with creaking hinge,
and left the boys to marvel at this turn 
of fate; three days to raise a sum that Cal
had never seen at once, without a horse
but Wren to sell to raise the funds (and this
was something Cal could never do, for Wren
was the last living soul Cal’s father saw
the moment when eternal sleep befell him).

Despite this insurmountability,
John felt a twinge of guilt at his relief
that he and Cal would, for a time at least,
be spared the stairwell’s treacherous descent.
For such a thought, his penance clearly meant
he would help Cal to raise every last cent.

The painted petals in the frame
Curl and vanish into light. 
With brush and water, she first tamed
The painted petals. In the frame
Of gilded wood you set aflame,
Her strokes feigned love she'd not requite. 
The painted petals in the frame
Curl and vanish into light. 

Through darkling clouds, the veins of citylight
are seams of gold that split the onyx night. 
And though these earthly lights are not so old
as stars whose brilliance travels through the cold
of space as artifacts and images
of untold time, these lights below are hinges
guiding memory's door upon its arc. 
Would that it'd guide the damn thing shut. Your stark
expression hasn't changed; at least, the ghost
my mind conjures of you projects the host
of disappointments I laid at your feet
like graveside lilies. Wilt. Refresh. Repeat. 
I never mastered permanence. My friends,
like you, are far from me, and life impends
between us as the dark between the stars. 
What eye beholding you or them could parse
the signs we should have been? The zodiac
could spin eternally, but once it lacks
the taletellers who make those forms cohere,
it will be nothing but "those holes that pierce
the tapestry of night." When you and I 
both blinker out, our tales will likewise die. 

The day before the horses died, the boy
was backing down a trail near Hiltonhead,
a blanket tossed over his shoulders against
the pre-dawn chill. Easy it was to lose
one’s way in the gloaming dark, ‘long narrow trails
with endless variants, wending through trees
alike as sister’s veiled until daylight
reveals night’s trickery. Behind them lay
a bend with space enough for Wren, the horse,
to turn and point her rider home again.
Cal urged her on. His mount’s unsteady steps,
lumbering blindly through the brake, had made 
sleep seem a foreign thing. His mattress but
a distant joy. His eider pillow like 
anachronistic leisure.

                                   Rest belongs
to the dead, his father'd aptly said, two months
before he caught a hoof to his thigh and joined them. 
                                 
Without his stoic laughter round the fire—
telling tales of Wren as a tiny foal
chasing down the ranch’s herd with just 
a clattering sack of marbles Cal had left
too-damn-near the corral—without his laugh,
the woods just weren't the same. Sometimes he thought
he heard the clack of his old man's mare behind him. 
 
Back home was Merl, of course, the second wife, 
and her no treat to live with. Never viewed 
Cal like a son, at least in no sense Cal
could reckon. Maybe that was why he stopped
for lunch, it not yet noon and he two hours
from home, and broke his crust of day-old bread
beneath the oak and split with Wren an apple. 

The morning's chill had given way to heat,
and Cal, his blanket packed in saddle bag, 
settled himself upon the shaded grass
where he uncuffed and loosely rolled his sleeves
and stationed himself to better catch the breeze.
In the valley below, a river sparked in the sun,
and upon it he gazed, wondering at its source.
Did it start as a drop in the heavens, alone,
falling in pride as though the hammer of God
and boasting how it’d pound the mountain down? 
And what dismay, to join company
and gather with the sky’s other sons,
jostling together in the faceless stream,
corraled by mountain rock, sluicing toward sea,
humbled by perfect anonymity.

Cal’s half the apple cracked between his teeth
as Wren, pawing at roots, suddenly shied
from treeline, nearly trampling Cal. The horse
had spotted someone lurking in the woods.
God knows how long he’d sat, statue still,
observing horse and boy, and to what end.

You look a little lost, declaimed the man
by way of greeting, tottering from the woods
with high-waisted pants of gabardine that seemed
more sap than cloth. His creamy, pinstriped shirt—
club collar, elegant but torn—was smudged,
unpressed, untucked, and dirty stockings hung
adrift his neck. Barefooted on the roots,
he bobbed like one whose feet were kith to coals.
He couldnt've been more than twenty-three, 
but 'neath the stranger's eyes, an age-old scratch 
wrinkled oddly upon his sooty cheek. 

Cal stood but held his ground, touching the Smith
& Wesson hanging at his hip.

                                                   I am
in no way lost, he said indignantly. 

Cal'd marveled at his father's keeping calm
when wanderers came upon them in the night,
asking to share their fire. Perhaps the one
who'd rarely sleep would need not fear the dark
motives that lay in men's dark hearts. Just tend
the fire that holds their secret wills at bay. 

Glancing at Cal's holster, the stranger laughed. 

You speak as one who does not know the world,
he said. Everyone's lost. We wander here
and there, compassless, till we stumble in
our graves. Then who will bear our tales back
to those who wish to live? Of course you're lost. 

I trust I know my way from here, said Cal. 

He sidled round to where he might mount Wren,
unsnapped his holster. 

                           Heard that, said the man. 
And though my luck's been bad, I bet you keep
that pistol at your side. 

                                     You take another step
and you'll find out. Might be you dip your toes
into an early grave. 

                                 A truce, a truce—
He raised his hands in mock surrender—All
I want's a bite of bread. I thought you might
suffer me that. The road's been long, and none
have supped with me. 

                            I need be gettin' on. 
Besides, I gave my mare the last of it. 

What's waiting for you, you feel the need to rush?
Early or late, you'll still be Fortune's fool. 
Your every step's been measured. Mine as well. 
Come on. You must have something you can spare?

I need be gettin' on. That's all, said Cal. 

The stranger reached his hand behind his back
but froze beneath Cal's pistol's bore-black gaze
leveled at him across the saddle, smiled, 
and said, You're quick, but let's all keep our heads.
Then from back pocket, pulled a coin and flicked it, 
high and gleaming on its arcing path 
toward Cal. 

            Heads says you have enough to spare. 

Cal caught the coin, and in his palm, the bust
of goddess Liberty, with anxious lips
agape, was blind to what their futures held. 

While silver fate had spun, the stranger's hand
had formed into a finger gun, and as 
Cal raised his head, the stranger's hammer-thumb
depressed. He winked and said, How ‘bout that grub?
                     
It wasn’t lost on Cal that as he’d looked
to catch the whirling coin he could have caught
a bullet to the chest. A foolish death,
he reckoned as he reached in saddlebag,
retrieved the butt-end of the bread, and flung
it at the scar-cheeked man. The latter kept
his eyes on Cal, even while he snatched
and brought the manna to his filthy lips. 

Who the hell walks barefoot through the woods?
said Cal, coming around the side of Wren. 

A man who’s lost his way, the stranger said.
And lost a bet ‘gainst his balmoral boots—
that was a shame. But things can be replaced,
and I have credit with the haberdash. 
                 
You’ll want your dollar back, I guess, said Cal.

The stranger waved him off. 

                                                 Keep the change.
On second thought, my rule of thumb is not
to lose one’s bottom dollar on a bet. 
You need to keep your bankroll close, in case
the whim of Fortune favors you again.
But that, he said with finger aiming low,
is not a bad bit of artillery.
What’re the odds you’d be tempted to bet
that pistol ‘gainst, say, an engagement ring?

My pistol for a diamond ring, said Cal. 

Do I look so pedestrian to you?
A diamond, no. It's eighteen karat gold
with flush-mount rubies all along its shank. 
The center stone's an emerald, thick and bright. 

And what of your prospective fiancée?

Everything round these parts can be replaced.  
The ring, your gun, the fated bride to be. 
I read the signs. Were I to lose the ring
—and here, he shrugged—what's it matter to me?
A thousand rings. A thousand girls. One gun. 

You've seen the gun, but where's the ring, said Cal. 
I don't suppose you have it on you now, 
and I'm not keen to wager sight unseen
with someone who's got soot from cheek to cheek. 
Besides, I'd lose my soul before this gun,
my soul again before a worthy bride.
If I'd a girl to give a golden ring,
I'd not be found wand'ring without my shoes
and begging food. I'd make sure she could rest
her head in peace. My home would be her home. 

The stranger rolled his eyes. 

                                     I should have guessed
you'd be the sappy sort. You cowpokes are,
in my experience, too good for God
and Devil, both. Too good to lose your soul,
I bet, and pull that trigger when it counts. 

My hand would send deserving men to hell
if it meant risking hell to save my wife. 
A living soul is readily reclaimed,
and this revolver, don't you doubt, shoots straight. 

You have my blessing then, the stranger said. 

Just as he spoke, rifle-shot cracked the air
and loosed a spray of dirt that struck like spit
into Cal's eyes. He dropped prone on the ground
and blinked his sight clear of the muddy scales,
descried atop a big bay steed a man,
rifle aloft and aiming up the hill. 

The stranger scrambled coolly to a tree. 
He stood there with his crinkled scar, his grin,
his shabby clothes and naked feet, yet looked
so smug you'd think that he had browbeaten fate. 
He caught Cal's eye: So here's your chance to prove
that thing shoots straight. Just aim it right down there
and blast that moron off his fat-ass horse. 

He's gotta be two hundred yards away. 
Only a fool would stake his life against
a rifle at that range. 

                                  Now where's that talk
of sending men to hell? This one's about
as wide and dumb as an ox. You couldn't miss. 

Out from behind the trunk the stranger leaned
and put his hands around his mouth and yelled,
Your shooting's 'bout as good as a gelded mule's!

First rolled the sound like thunder up the hill
and then the bark beside the stranger's head
erupted, splinters of spruce cascading down
Cal's back and thighs. The stranger ducked behind
the tree and said, Well, damn if that weren't close. 

Cal gestured toward the horse. 

                                                Get up. 

							And then 
sideways he rolled and, propped on elbows, aimed 
above the fat man, shot to slow his pace,
and leapt to saddle. Far side of the hill
green as an angel's braid, and down Wren raced. 
Another shot echoed through valley air, 
the lead whistling through the outstretched limbs
of oaks above. And then Wren’s pounding hooves,
so syncopated with Cal’s pounding heart,
shattered the torpid, silent heat, alone.

Revolver in hand but finger out the guard,
Cal glanced beyond the stranger, back to where
he'd had his lunch. 

                                And who the hell was that?

The stranger smirked. A man who bested me
at cards. 

                 At cards? Don't you pay your debts?

I've never made a bet I couldn't pay.
His is a different gripe. I may have lost
my hand, but that's a man whose daughter lost
something of higher price. 

                                         I see, said Cal.

They rode on, far enough for Cal to judge
the vengeful man ill-formed for his pursuit. 
Cal had to wonder, though, how long a man
whose daughter's dignity had been impugned
would hunt some filthy stranger through the hills.
What good could be attained by killing him?
What honor could the girl hope to reclaim
being this scar-cheeked stranger's ball and chain?

Beneath another forest's boughs Cal fixed 
his five-shot in its leather slot, took up
the reins with his gunhand, and slowed sweet Wren
down to a trot. 

                          You're on your own from here,
said Cal. You've been more fuss than I deserve.

What you deserve, I cannot say, said he. 
But blaming me for trouble's where you're off. 
You blame the stars, or god, or what-hell-else. 
We both are pawns in all their fickle games. 

I'd rather just be shut of all your talk
than fret the machinations of the stars. 
Get down and walk. I don't care where you go,
so long as you go somewhere far from me. 

Dismounting Wren, the stranger looked at Cal
and, stepping back from road, rider, and horse,
he said, I bet the world we meet again. 
Fati volente, in better circumstance. 

What difference would it make to me? said Cal. 

Well, if it comes to it, I guess we’ll see.

With that, the stranger stepped into the woods
wherein the chiaroscuro of the leaves 
effected a disfigured vanishing. 

Cal could not quell the eerie sense that death
had run a flirting finger ‘cross his cheek
and, having been rejected by the lad,
was ravenous to take him now by force.
Alive, but feeling his life’s contingency,
Cal left the holster on his hip unsnapped
all the two-hour ride till he saw home. 
Cresting the hill a quarter mile off, 
he thought it odd to find the clothesline bare. 
Where were the listless laundered sheets like ghosts
billowing 'gainst the freshly shiplapped house?
Upon the gunfight morningtide had come 
an unreceding flood of cortisol,
and into the ribs of Wren, Cal kicked his heels. 

Sorry, girl. Something don't feel right. 

A foul odor hung in the air as Cal
rode Wren into the stable. Bitter scent.
Fermented. Copper and blood. Capitan’s head
drooped atop the stall, his glassy eyes 
rolling as he pawed the door, his breath
ragged and sagging like a slowing engine
stuck a few gears too high. Next to him,
Evelyn Roan lay slick with sweat. Tremors
rippled her velvet flank. She gnashed her teeth,
distended pupils an all-consuming black,
as if to apprehend the myriad trails
down which the devil sends death’s courtiers.

Cal found the other horses much the same
and, putting Wren to pasture far from house
and stable, steeled himself to look for Merl,
stood in the lawn and glanced window to window.
The breeze gently tugged the gingham curtains,
but all within was still. She’d cleaned the house.
The couch’s throws were fluffed and neatly propped
against its tufted, emerald arms. The lamps’
chimneys and shades she’d dusted. Not even a rag
on kitchen counter had she left behind. 
The rail above the wood balusters gleamed
indecently, lewd invitation up
the swept and polished stairs. Cal took them slow.

The hallway on the second floor was bright,
and sunlight glowed from rooms with doors thrown wide—
all of them thrown wide open save for one.
He found her cradled in the clawfoot tub.
Against the water’s blushing pink, her skin
was pale as cream, much like a precious doll
best left behind glass, a beauty never touched
nor soiled by children’s hands. She looked, Cal thought,
quite pleased to have revealed this mystery.

He plodded down the stairs still seeing her,
a rose that’d wither without progeny,
and sat upon the neatly laid out couch,
his dusty raiment marring the testament
that Merl had meant to be her eulogy.
And thus he sat until the deputy
entered the house and asked him where she was.
Cal couldn’t recall alerting anyone
but pointed up the stairs. The sheriff’s hat
bobbed above the sill as he walked the yard.

We called the vet, he said when he came in.
You’ll find him waiting for you by the barn.

He had a bowler’s cap, a long duster,
and in his black-gloved fist, an attaché.
In stony silence to the stables walked
the doctor and the boy, both covering mouths
against the unrelenting scent of rot.

It’s arsenic alright, the vet declared
before inspecting a single dying horse.

Still in a daze, Cal asked how he could tell,
prompting the vet to kick the tattered bag
with bold lettering by the door, which Cal
had somehow missed early that afternoon. 
The vet sifted the feed, beckoned Cal,
and pointed out the chalky residue,
another telltale sign of arsenic. 
Cal had to turn his back on Capitan 
now lying prone with Evelyn Roan and twitching
on the floor. A hundred head of horse 
from stall to stall were sprawled incontinent. 

Son of a bitch, he said. Kill yourself,
sure. But why poison the horses, Merl?
Damn selfish thing to do. 

                                           The vet concurred. 
 
Cal couldn't bear it that these noble beasts
had been reduced to such ignoble ends. 
And almost worse than that, within each horse
was sunk, in equal share, the value of
the ranch. Their lives were his inheritance,
and that was all but lost. Arrhythmic kicks
of hooves beating stall walls bludgeoned Cal's thoughts. 
He just managed to ask, What can I do?

The vet looked at him sympathetically. 

Cases like these, I 'xpect the lot to be
dead before dawn. What live will be in need
of a well-placed bullet, son. 

                                                And so it was.