Calf
       

And when the forelegs unlaced and let go,
when the little beads of hips slid, and the skull
foreshortened of hide seemed nearly human

still I came stitching myself under the fence wire
to crouch by the bright, wrung hide
by my galoot dog openly crunching the teaset-sized bones.

The calf died the way it slept
curled around the charm mound of its head,
one leg folded, one pointing a clean pink hoof forward.

More faithfully than to any god, we came:
the carrion eaters that persist past cringing
to pull the body a little way farther in dark,

the buzzards bulking up nearby trees,
and I bowing and straightening through fences
to watch the face in its sequined slide of flies

until the jaw in the long grass
waned, was the last thing lost. And the grass,
tossing and tossing it, was the jaw.

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Copyright © 2013 Lisa Coffman All rights reserved
from Less Obvious Gods
Iris Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission