Memorial Day Night

it is tonight an ambling gale most serious chewing through orchard husk to focus the locusts shrieking themselves lost but by their own skittish clamor and crepuscular chorus hollow for the streaming stars now see the girl emerge who is all of fourteen years blonde and blue with red ribbons tied from the heart of the wood rich with thickened entanglements of moss and wolfen things and her wicker woven basket spilling cherries on the meadow next to a naked orchard she rests there tonight exhausted from childbirth to hear the song of the wolves as they feast on placenta in the morning she wakes at dawn’s early light and calls to the orchard that the meadow has blossomed blood-red poppies and whispers a prayer for her step-father’s son and all those lost to the howl and all those condemned by the preacher’s daughter through decades of slaughter. 5/27/19