The spit bugs have been very systematic,
decorating each branch of the rosemary
with a glistening ornament.
Gusts blow thistles’ heads to smithereens.
Clots of down straggle across the gravel.
Gone to seed, blowzy heads of dill —
I almost wrote nod, how passé.
Last night’s singed moths are brittle.

The flame burns guileless blue
under the battered kettle.
When the wind blows just so
there’s a whiff of french fry oil
from the shack by the ferry dock
or maybe, just maybe,
of biodiesel. After dark
count the cars as they disembark,
bouncing over the rumble strip.

Foam on breakers mark
what could be the first appearance
of feathers where, for millennia,
there were only scales.
A tanker eases through the level’s eye,
a target in an elaborate shooting gallery.
Mist the color of skim milk
hides the off-shore terminus.

In the creamery your goats’ produce
sweetens into sustenance.
Wrapped in grape leaves
or daubed with ash, like sadhus.
Beyond the neighbors’ split rail fence,
as if nursing a grudge,
the timeless bawling of ruminants.
Docile as old wives’ tales,
they kneel before the rain.

Its headwaters in the library,
the eponymous creek,
is stitched like a homily
into the back pasture.
Creatures come to it as they
come to your open hand.
I read to the them from your rocker,
their oblong eyes unseeing.

While the sun set its signet
on your wax-pale shoulders,
swallows picked
the cottonwood cotton.
Your least favorites, the crows
are gathering into hoards.
Is their dawn harangue
faintly apocalyptic?

The goats are dripping
in their winter coats
under dripping eaves,
a cornucopia
in their curled horns,
their teats swollen:
this land is yours.