My headlights pass over black wet slicks
on the cratered back road, swinging
their beam flat over fenceposts
meant to keep cows in,
posts made of cedar twenty years old
now tilted out of grit in snowbanks,
leaning like sick men waiting,
holding on to each other by wire
rusted and snapped in snow.
It will be weeks of labor to fix that fence
dropped over in a line of even angles
from a dozen heavy snows;
I suppose his cows will stand in
winter fog
as they do each morning
at the edge of road salt and potholes
waiting to cross
their hooves winter-wet
huffing out their pale green breath
in March before mud and silt ruin
the basin field, before ice melt slides
down the hill to marsh.
Only snowbanks line the field
but he lets the cows in and
they cross the road
one following the other,
like refugees,
held in place
by the strong fence they remember
that is not there.
Mira Coleman writes from Western Maine, was first published in 1975 in Flowering After Frost, An Anthology of Contemporary New England Poets Branden Press, Boston. Her work has recently appeared in several print editions of Daily Bulldog LLC, Farmington, Maine and is forthcoming in the Ranfurly Review; Ink, Sweat and Tears; Wings of Icarus; Word Riot and The Red Fez. She worked for 27 years in the Massachusetts Trial Court before retiring as a probation officer in 2002.