Crossing
- Crossing
poetry, livestock, yearlings
Flagged to a halt by a woman in bootsand an oiled canvas coat, we stopped for her
orange flag on the highway yesterday inthe first flurries of the season and watched
from the truck's cab as they moved the yearlingsfrom the north pasture to the south. No one
wanted to be the first to go. Their darkhides veiled in thin lace of flakes like the child-
sized bridal train for sale at the thrift shopin town, they huddled at the gates making
the faint sounds of mercy. Behind them, menand women on horseback moved through the scrim
of snow, impossible to know what theycalled to each other as we watched their lips
from behind the glass. Today the world ismelt and muck, and from the high road I see
their bodies scattered—easy once again—across the field. Yesterday is still
a land with a blanket pulled over its borders,though each knows what it means to have crossed. [End Page 25]
Keetje Kuipers is the author of All Its Charms (BOA, 2019), The Keys to the Jail (BOA, 2014), and Beautiful in the Mouth (BOA, 2010). Her poems have appeared in Narrative, Tin House, Orion, and the Believer, as well as The Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies. She has been a Wallace Stegner fellow, Bread Loaf fellow, and the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Resident. Kuipers is Senior Editor at Poetry Northwest.
