and shall the rock be removed
out of his place?
Job 18.4
You tell me you’ve never heard it —
the difficult age of things calling out
from the hardpan fields
where stubble and roadgrade collide
in a rubble of loose stones
and tractor prints;
where a couple who parked for an evening
abandoned to love
awaken as cobwebbed skeletons,
humming their lies
into the O of a fence-post tire,
its white-washed No Hunting
message surrendering each day
a little more to the sun.
It rings out like a sky
washed clean of birds,
where only the flutter of wings
lingers, — or the dusty spot
where a footprint shivers
down to the molten heart of the earth.
Rebekah Orders Lasagna, a book of Jenkinson’s poems, will be published by Washburn University’s Woodley Press later this year.
