everybody’s making holes

the chicks scratch through their litter
only to find yesterday’s news beneath

the flickers peck the earth for ants
and enlarge their home in the alder

my nephew’s son cries out
when every hole in the bath fills up

I dig post-holes for the new fence
and little divots in a row for peas

and tiny needle-holes
across the sheer fabric of a summer dress

and my heart dissolves
in the space between your coming and going

Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 21, Issue 1.

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I raked the wet apple-leaves into the hen yard
where the young chickens prowled around the pile, suspicious of this new thing

until the boldest, the chestnut tinted Rhode Island Red
picked at a leaf, dropped it, lifted a minute bug,
stepped forward, followed by the other three

and then began their dance of foot forward and pulling back
head dipping for larvae and woodlice,
the hidden eggs of slugs and millipedes
forward, back, peck, muttering and singing to each other

until all the leaves were spread across the pen
as they had been over the lawn;
now each one examined and plucked clean,
a tablecloth of gold and brown covering the mud
churned now with manure, food for microbes

that will pick apart the fabric
and leave lacework skeletons and leaf mold
for worms to weave through their veiny tunnels in the soil—
the red hen and black, the tan and ochre
turning and turning the leaves, not attending
to the misty rain laying over us a beadwork like crystal.

Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 20, Issue 3.

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