Birth

In the air, honeysuckles and a polecat, rife and wild, I witness a birth: a cow’s belly swollen solid, a calf’s legs half out. Sliced open, her calf flops out with a membrane, a cord strangling the neck. I watch their legs chained to a tractor and dragged to trees scratched by antlers, left with velvet. Atop and between those trees where they rotted, I lie on a hammock of vines that loosen, lowering me to their bones: her face with briars, her calf with fungi. Nearby, a pond with algae so thick, how do fish breathe? And on that bank, crows gorge on a moccasin. I walk knowing what many already know— the body betrays us all.