Sometimes it’s just the sound of words
and their positions on the page, read
with a quiet violence, leaving a stain behind.
As when the weather turned cold
and the black walnuts fell, how
we gathered them, grandfather and I,
our fingers dyed brown and browner,
how one time we entered a field
the theme of which was sheep,
some dead (some dog) some not.
It was upon the dead the accent fell,
the magical horror—a matter of trees
and windy silence like the sound of Ohs
and the odd positioning of bodies,
like the exact word in the right place,
each walnut in its place, its place
the grass, now the basket,
bringing them home for squirrels
to winter on. Buried them mostly,
the squirrels did, as farmers
their sheep—or whatever farmers do
with sheep the dog has ravaged,
leaving their eyes like blank verse,
the dog returning to the field
to scan a line of scarecrow trees.