Debris
When, after the corn came down,
we walked into the debris,
when we had harvested our longing
and stood amid the stubble,
I saw perched on a fence post
a red-shouldered hawk
unmoving against the gray sky.
Like in the days when our desire
had fouled the well water
and what poured through
the faucets had tasted so bitter
we’d been reluctant to use it
even on your hydrangeas, we walked
down this morning to the river
and found a dead doe lying as regret
beside the sycamores. The doe
was becoming the earth, decaying
into loam, and we watched
the flies and thought of how
a body can imagine itself
as otherworldly, how the corn
can lift itself on eternal stalks
toward the sky, and how
the red-shouldered hawk can fly
up from the fence post and carry
its love toward the clouds.
Doug Ramspeck: Artist’s Statement