I’d like to picture it this way:
As the weather turned unreasonable, an angel appeared in the form of a longhorn steer on a hilltop ranch bereft of horses. Lo and behold, proclaimed the steer, and the river in the valley sought a change of venue. Schools and banks closed; the mail lady was delayed. Neighbors gathered in a farmhouse parlor like one extended family and sang the hymns everyone knew, the hymns that sounded like rain on the thin metal roof of the barn, where a cat slept quietly in the loft, waiting to give birth.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 27, Issue 5.
Phillip Sterling’s collections of poetry include Local Congregation: Poems Uncollected 1985-2015, Short on Days, And Then Snow, Mutual Shores, and four chapbook-length series of poems. A collection of essays and memoir, Lessons in Geography: The Education of a Michigan Poet, was published by Cornerstone Press in August 2024.
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