In the yellowed milk of predawn sky, he makes us sprint until we glister
with cold, sweaty gooseflesh. Press past beckoning wings
of the massive, solitary oak, the fishless green river, striped by industry,
the refineries amber-lit scaffolding. To arrive at the edge of an untilled
cornfield throttled by shorn stalks, sterile terrain laid like a bed of nails.
When I want to take a photograph, I hope to capture the red-tailed hawk—
majestic atop the lightning-split pinnacle of a once precariously bent box
elder—biting the head off a field mouse it snatched from the black-
berry bramble. Or the pair of fat fox squirrels dangling by toenails,
inverted on spindly maple boughs to peel feathered husks
and stuff wads of wet green seeds into their cheeks before winter.
But Tom is not satisfied until we are all stripped of everything worldly,
our moon-bright bodies aglow against the barely cracked door of morning.
Not until his skin slicks with black soil, planting himself in the stark, flat
field, our limbs a tangled clump of creation, writhing around and through,
devouring the dirt of his body like overgrown earthworms.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 26, Issue 5.
Elizabeth Rae Bullmer has been writing poetry since the age of seven. Bullmer’s poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality and the Arts, Peninsula Poets, Her Words, Sky Island Journal, Rockvale Review and The Awakenings Review. Her most recent chapbook, Skipping Stones on the River Styx, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. She is a licensed massage and sound therapist and mother of two phenomenal humans, living with four fantastic felines in Kalamazoo, MI.
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