There’s one firefly responsible for the pasture

of clover and vetch and cow patties

flecked with the pesky birth of orange.

The bathroom door unlocks, sending

three thousand volts into my elbow

like my naked feathered and overfed

soul is a funnybone. Pipeline

detergent in my corporeal eye

had me told stories of the blind

and my luck, because I left early

and look out the window at 

one burnout bug. 

I dwell on the week old calf

bounding with a life he found

in knocked knees, his hard hoofed security

beating hard behind lined eyes. The vanity

that nature affords. I dwell on the way he passed

through the hot fence, and the kind of knowing

that led him back through. We live on a shred 

of wild spearmint off a dirt road, free ranged

in geometric superficies, to be overstepped

or slid between. To be grazed and managed.

To be dismantled at the season’s close

or the borders split.

In the meantime he sucks the heifers quarters

like they’ve offered premature

mammary molasses. I was building a clown

out of steel wool and pelts, but I can see

the snails all pent up and pointed towards 

the tips of the brome stalks, each one

deluded when it comes to the distance

of good soil, when it comes to the flick

they followed like meteors. Because

when all zinc and calendula retire

the firefly leaves her post and the calf skull

cracks twice as buds reach for the sun.