A couple of weeks ago we suffered some losses on our little farmette in Portland. (For those readers who aren’t in the neighborhood, we have a double lot, and cultivate it intensively.) I was pretty miserable, so I coped with it the only way a writer can–I wrote a poem::

A Crack in the Crust

I am too small a vessel to hold
this overflow of mourning:
the chicken who begged me for berries
died without warning
then the sweet cat who buried
her nose in my armpit.
I buried them both in the garden

Must I harden myself to death?
You tell me they are only animals.
We are all only animals.

When I turn the hose on
ants run frantic, rise from their hidden nest
each carrying a precious egg
or larva in her mandibles.
We can’t hear their cries

Some plants attacked by predators
broadcast pheromones of fear
signal agony to their kin
who secrete a kind of
molecular armor.
We can’t smell their terror

Each week I phone an old friend
sliding into dementia.
She knows it’s her last adventure
each week she chants her mantra
“I’m going to enjoy this day.”
I can only imagine her panic
I mourn her by inches

I stamp down the dirt, return the shovel to the shed,
wash my hands, make plans:
the chicken will nourish a huckleberry bush
the cat, a wild currant.
Life devours life, I tell myself,
we are only a thin smear of loving and dying
on a planet of granite and iron,
and I keep trying
to hold in the hurt
that wells up like magma
seeking cracks
in the crust of the earth.