Griebel, Rosemary

THE PIGS

1. Maybe it was the way we became animals.
2. The rusty smell of turning meat on the grill,
3. the private urges of the bedroom, memory,
4. the summer heat and the women arriving
5. in his truck, night after night. The women
6. arriving with pink purses, thinking they were safe
7. from the street. And the pigs sleeping,
8. making those little noises that pigs make
9. when they sleep. Their velvet ears the size
10. of a man’s hands. And what they can do.
11. The hands of one man.
12.  
13. Or maybe it was the season. Fall coming on
14. and that heavy light dragging across the land.
15. The details deepened the day.
16. We couldn’t talk because there is no justice
17. when you know nothing is as it seems, nothing the same.
18.  
19. Remembering how as a teenager I fed pigs, an age
20. when the boys in big trucks talked about porking
21. the girls, and I loved their eyes. I loved the soft light
22. of the pigs’ eyes when they looked up
23. from the trough. They trusted me to feed them,
24. would eat anything: fermenting grain, bones
25. cabbage heads. Aren’t we all born
26. into a trust with this world? And with what measure
27. and certitude do we get into sorrow’s truck and ride.