Nathan Erwin
Another Poem for Finca Luna Búho
Last week, as I left your land, the fire embered,
Fran cleaned up the tea, Neyali drowsed by
the woodstove, & atalanta stood in the doorway, remembering how
the snow used to be, its height & heft, its hours. Snow quenched the dark’s knife,
as trooper pulled me over, asked from where
I was coming.
My car idled as he went back to pull up my list of misdemeanours. A Great Horned Owl
watched my taillights. I considered the cost of fuel & lied: I was just passing through.
In the morning, you loaded the delivery trucks to bring free food
to two hundred undocumented families, all day
the rock salt twisted into your bellies.
Intimacy begins with the meeting of soil & saliva, of law & outlaw,
the wooden table’s ritual.
If the butterfly cave of echinacea & blue monk, the owls, the brooks,
the deep fire at the root of your belly doesn’t feed the people? Then who, or what, will?
¿Para quein es este vida? ¿Somos corrientes de la pasado?
Together, todos nosotras,
we will bury their lie of scarcity
with the hands of our children.