"Doocot Paradise Blues"
The reverberations sting like snake bites.
Full of fearsome creaks and crackles, I wait
high in the doocot tower, above the valley of rifles.
You are on my mind. How long? I lost count.
In the evenings small, semitransparent angels come
to make their nests inside the wattle walls.
They ask me, please, is this paradise?
I tell them, yes. But secretly, I’m not so sure.
Come, rest on my mind. All I hear is rabid gunfire.
I do not pray. Sometimes I keen.
What goes on, I have no way of knowing.
The angels ate my last deck of cards.
Should you and I meet when the mad season is over,
we will walk hand in hand some day
in other valleys, other paradises. If not,
wouldn’t the world already have come to an end?
I think of my two young heifers
roaming the foothills, on their own now.
With luck, their shyness will keep them safe.
Moo-eyed, I scan the horizon, watch for a sign.
© 2007 Jane Roken
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