(The day spools up its turbines of light)

The day spools up its turbines of light,
The systematic rupture of rock-doves
From the roofs, steady repetition
Of wind through the trees, the fresh-plowed
Weed-break at the field’s end, sweet stalks
Coming into corn where the truest augury
Is the kingbird in the mind.
Across the mitigation a birch crushed the wire
Though the heifers still obey
And a New Holland thresher keels its crop,
Splaying bright particulates to the air—
Weeds at full mast, crows fielding
For a lamb strapped to a post for bait—
A near hammer chipping slag from the skaggs
Of a harrow, a duck’s call echoes
In a valence we cannot hear, like a river
Across bedrock, the ricket fence
That keeps this heart from the others.

Kevin Goodan