One of Us Is Sleeping

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THE LIGHT COMES creeping in over the plowed fields. Slabs of dark clay soil thrust up in disorder, bull calves fighting in the stalls, the thud of too much body in a space too small. And the snow, so gently it lies now, upon the ridges; upon the landscape, everything living and everything dead. A coat of cold, a deep, reassuring voice. The landscape, naked, unsentimental. Here is the feeling of missing you, though no one to miss.

A landscape of lace that is frost.

The landscape is the same, and yet the landscape is never the same. Where have I been, I ask myself. My lower lip has burst like the skin of a ripe plum. Falling on the patio, knees and the taste of iron; lying on the concrete behind the rectory, waiting for the tractor to return home with the first load; if we’re not up and gone we’ll be in trouble. The way they come driving; hunch-backed trailers. One afternoon we’re friends enough to play; we leap among the stacked bales. Fall down in between and you’ll die of starvation. Like the cat we find, but that’s not until autumn. So it hadn’t abandoned its litter at all.

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