McMaster, Rhyll

The Slaughter

1. These were real events:
2. the pig killing and dismemberment,
3. the skinned fox, the exhumed hat,
4. the winter party,
5. the bedded calf.
6.  
7. In the depths of your life
8. you said, ‘Son, you clean that knife
9. before you hand it back.’
10. The fox shot and skun,
11. the pig sunk in a bath, its bristles cleaned.
12. Who knows what lone molecules
13. latched onto which.
14.  
15. These are real events
16. in the cone of time,
17. like your arm over me in bed,
18. breath in my ear.
19. Dear to me, the advent of the hat.
20. ‘Keep that, now one of the boys
21. might need it.’
22.  
23. The pug lumbering erratically
24. on the spit.
25. Winter night, the stars a swarm of white bees, prickling,
26. cold, half-delineated outline of the hills;
27. the grass sparkled, animals stirred.
28.  
29. We heard the story of the pet calf,
30. thought lost, then found
31. stretched out on the double bed.
32.  
33. Don’t doubt it, this real event
34. that ties a string to half a life.
35. Old events:
36. the exhumed hat, the dead fox,
37. the party of us, the slumbering calf.