The Pigs Left Today

And I rolled over in my bed, relieved
I could let go of all my vigilance
and release my night watch for that last day
when we’d have to say goodbye. Despite the
email stating they would stay for three months,
I came to believe that after they had
done their part and turned the weeds with such
ease, even glee, as if a prayer of praise
or confession, every neighbor would
be stirred by the candor, the truth that it
takes this much mud to start over, to lay
the ground bare, and let the empty space be
the goal, until we could finally see
the fields long since squelched with a hunger for
housing and sidewalks and streets, and know it
as our hunger, thick and crusted on their
hair, stuck in their snouts, still unafraid to
upend each root, relentless at their task,
willing to reconcile on our behalf
with the land, with life, with all the lost worlds,
piecing together who we are, have been,
will be. After every revelation,
when we had at last come clean, then they would
settle in, we would forget this field had
ever been something other than their home.
When the kids and the dogs squealed with delight
and desire, when I called it all vespers,
you tried to decide if I was serious,
and I couldn’t stop crying and sighing
at the sky. But on the day the pigs left,
I was weary of drawing distinctions
between make believe and magic. I went
to the lake where the trees were giddy with
fall and already the threat of frost hung
in the light. Every branch reached over my
head like a baptism, or prophesy,
that after all things come apart, some spring
will come, with snow too early or too late
not enough to fix the bitterness of
winter, or to redeem every secret
violence, but it will come. After the
flood, the dove flew free, and never returned.

August 26, 2024

March 10, 2025