Cows. They Have Stupid Eyes, Friend So Dear

to me wrote. But I’d bring her back to see sheepin the paddock step out of their fleece likethe gleaming bodies she knew from the bath,

washing child after child those years.

She’d like that. Painter. Poet. Silencedby cells gone ruthless, not telling one of us.I can’t hold that against her.

The stricken body gets so familiar it turnsto a rag. It must be hung on a line to dry.I’d tell her I know now what’s solitary, what isn’t.

Sheep, their abrupt nakedness inside that fence wasn’t

a simple matter, blade and blood, radiant foldon fold distant under one giant eucalyptus for shade,bare bodies by way of the shearing

a shock. Nor the Old Masters, what they did

never easy either, to brush in a backdrop, burnt umberand bone black warming up eachroom in their paintings, laying down sorrow

as context, as drapes that part only atthe most beloved lit whatever-it-is, what she left.