MICROCOSM

                  It was impossible to make it through the tragedy
                 Without poetry.
                      – Joy Harjo (“Becoming Seventy”)

This other world of cows and calves,
of motherhood exemplified, and bulls,
like men, trailing wire of down fences

is yet to be expected. A bumper crop
of rodents and snakes surround us,
the full moon coyote count of duets

and trios draws closer around us
in the half-light. The metaphors
and similes come easily to favor

humanity ‘midst the tragic chaos
where the latest issue of the truth
has come to be disbelieved.