Darkness wounds the barley,

etching it with denser clouds. A herd sends its

envoy out to nose the garbage at
roads edge before creeping into the expanse.
And the rest follow with cheap hunger
ten at once through the swaying curtain, heads
tipped, disappearing in the dim.
Wrong to think of them as vessels
in which your feelings live, leaping across emptiness.
Light a candle. Entertain pity all evening.
It isnt the deers work to hold you. That isnt you
growing full in the field. Paint them, your
heaviest brush lavish with creams and blacks,
trembling, timid, before the canvas.