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.