Today's poem is by Theodora Ziolkowski

Pastoral
       

A dozen Rhode Island Reds are erased overnight.
Feathers, like a lacerated mattress. Blood, like an afterthought—

Maybe this is the part when rustling betrays
the predator, or the same sound could have drawn me

to the last live hen. Once, a woman's dart missed
the bull's eye as well as your heart, or mine—

Hard to say which woman, whose heart.
It was a dark bar

when we entered, uninvited—
bombed for each other

as any drunk in the bar.
Every time I try to write a love poem,

I end up writing a poem about how I survived.
I was never one for crowds.

It was spring. Frost furred the trunks
of the maples, made a royal jelly of the garden.

I used to organize my day around counting
those hens. My fear was never

about the foxes. Letting those hens out
or penning them in: I never knew which was crueler.

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Copyright © 2023 Theodora Ziolkowski All rights reserved
from Salt Hill
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission