Cow's skull in the creek bed.
a runnel of mossy water alongside.
Chalky face of our classmate
shadowed by the casket's patient lid.
Hot weather: we sleep on the haywagon,
waking to dew on our thin blankets.
Soft ecstasy of the maggots in the possum's corpse;
floating children in a mist of pain.
What you want is what you are;
demons swarming in frightened wrists.
Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly--
A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky
Palely and flamily
Igniting its carbon monoxide, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.
O my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers.
- Poppies in October by Sylvia Plath
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