JEFF GUESS
Under the Headlines
Under a dawn frost the old dairy wall
crumbles into an exposure of chrome light
here her beauty bought only a brief season
unlike the wild briar that claimed a longevity
until this morning and this frost
like old dry barbs in firm young flesh
after him who lies in a week’s new proper grave
and never lost a night’s sleep for her
buried in his past of ninety years
now the dark silting of his veins
has finally claimed a craven heart
as his huge workman’s hands, then
– a clasp of thorns about her small soft throat
just until the frost fell in her eyes.
Burning the paddocks against the boxthorn
thistle, caltrop and the purple curse
there is only smoke now billowing up Bethel’s
miles of unmade road as far as the graveyard
red and blue lights from the highway patrol
flash through hot grey wreaths of stinging oils
what might be ghost riders of the salt bush and scrub
dismounted now in sickly yellow shapes
stand taciturn around the embers of a shrouded problem
one stoops into an abyss of acrid fog
to what the wild dogs and the wind’s attrition left behind
sticks and stones – the disinterred white bones
of an old homicide while all the while
things are falling through the air and going back to dust.