darkness (somewhere
above the stacks of retreads
and rings of stockpiled air filters

and rough pine planks that sag
under cans of every kind of paint
failing to approximate a rainbow,

where the top shelf’s a stash
of Hustlers and Playboys,
the chew roll of Copenhagen)

a single valentine from the drugstore
is hidden, with not a smudge
of grease or dirt on it.

Would it be hyperbole then
to say turpentine and thinner
perfume the air;

say the cobwebs
are like costume jewelry
accessorizing the beams and rafters;

their specks of dust,
tiny rhinestones
after last night’s killing frost?

Even the dead flies
and drops of oil spilt from drums
glitter in the weak and dirty light.

A favorite of bumblebees
but hell on earth for her husband,
it had a humbleness she loved

and she stroked the tassel’s velvet
wherever he figured clods or weeds.
He knew only the bite of its bristle,

uprooting them by the hundreds
and slapping their stubborn roots bare
to ensure a gradual death in the light.

They’ll eat up the crop
and be the undoing of us both.
Can’t she see that?

Once, she had hoped to marry
a man whose name was spread
clear across the horizon

where the strands of fence wire
stapled to every lonesome post
strummed like dulcimers from the wind,

a breeze that broadcast so easily
the white secrets of thistle seed
and might deliver her far away from here.

It helps to consider these hooks
extensions of your own hands,
a means of unloading harrowbeds

as the wrists learn what angle
to curve each point in deep enough,
then what angle for release.

And your body must invent
certain tricks of weight and balance
to flick itself down and back,

the way a jackknife folds and unfolds,
in order to encourage the bales
up overhead where they belong.

So few are left that know your story
we’ve no choice but to dish out the details.
Some swear you spent your days alone or sweating
alongside hired hands at Regan’s sheep camp.

For proof they point out a pair of shears,
a hooded lantern from the Depression,
but around here everything’s slurred
by malt liquor and years of indifference.

I heard there was no funeral,
your ashes spread out over the snow
on the graves of those rumored as kin.
Hearsay is history in this town.

One neighbor claims you handed him a tobacco tin,
chock-full of crumpled twenties and fifties
for the daughters, only two days beforehand.
I heard your sheep auctioned off for cheap.

A winter so cold the eggs froze under your hens....
Who found you anyway, stiff as a brace post
and propped up by the pot-bellied stove?
A dozen take the credit.