Like a calf without gold
Like gold without blood
Like blood without creamy fat
Like fat without salt
Like salt without a shaker
Like a Shaker without a psalm
Like psalms without palms
Like palms of plaited brass
Like a brass band without a battlefield
Like a field without cattle
Like a battle without fire
Like fire without air
Like air without the soft slurp
of purple lungs
Like lungs without ribs
Like ribs without tips
Like a tip without a top
Like a top-hat without a song
Like songs without words
Like words without starlight
Like starlight without
the velvet-curtained dark
Like curtains drown the dawn
Like dawn without wings
Like wings without a tail
Like a tail without the comet
Like a comet without ice
Like ice without cream
Like cream without the cow
Like a cow without her calf
bleeding in the grass
A folk healer tends to a sick cow in Muurame, Finland 1929
I haven’t written much (poetry or otherwise) lately. This poem dates from late 2022. I got a new job in Saint Paul, so I packed up a U-Haul with a few house plants and musical instruments and moved in with Leah’s Dad in the suburbs, while Leah finished packing up our place in Chicago. This poem comes from that period; while I was eager to begin a new job and explore a new city, I was certainly missing Leah, missing my friends, missing Chicago. It’s a poem of love and loss and hope.
