photo: marilyn fleming
When The Rooster Crows
by Marilyn Fleming
I
linger bedside—
the cry
of a killdeer
on my
tongue
birds
rustle
at the
water’s edge
his
teeth in a jar
daybreak
the milk house dark
—flash of a cat
his last words
‘there’s nothing left of me
—sell the farm’
fallowed land
from
the mouth of a cave
his
rattled breath
big
brown hands
of cold
dry clay—
a smell
of twigs
raw
earth shivers
threads
the seed—claims him
—winter
wheat
when
the rooster crows
no one
will remember
his
face—his name
who
will feed the cat
the old
farmhouse stands alone
–on the
river flows
~ first
published in the An Ariel Anthology 2014
