Meanwhile, the tower is famous because it leans,

deer bound in and out-- tails

flick ing white

in the-furthest-from-surrender kind of way.

Deer medicine surrounds : muggy :

quick in/quick out, daily

leaves crystalize. Some fall.

All summer the summer

was soaked, wore its hair plastered to its face--

so soaked roses, cukes drunk

on all the water, yellowed and endless

the months

:

the deer are still

bounding

in and out,

bags

of corn

are

being

cut 

open

by ourselves.

We don't aim

to kill them,

but the

others

do.

Every

morning

I watch the morning:

540 rise, stars lift,

sky—some beautiful

being, worth the linger

of our eyes.

The summer was soaked,

garden was soaked fruits,

which I ate, sometimes

on my knees, sometimes

cross-legg-ed, ankles

pressed in

to the earth.

Being buried to the chin in a pile of warm dryer clothes feels like:

the Earth is healed, the streets smell sparkly

and lack cement. She is able to be in her body--

each muscle, unlocked is weeping into

the finish line. The finish line is a light

beam. The quiet

is safety roaring's arms in which

she is.

Her muscles no longer

weep. They wept until 

they dropped

away. 

She is all that is left. 

She can look at any color and be okay. 

The stuttering stops-- that word 

in her mouth lets go of her tongue and as it

is spoken, it floats away.

I want to free all the candles

A sparrow with a broke wing

outside the door versus walking beneath a

row of trees filled with flittering sparrows.

Both were part of that day the hay stacks

were draped in blue blankets in the fields,

they asked can the cows keep up, can we

milk them smarter, turn their shit

into electricity if the milk doesnt obey?

It was that day-- day I fed the dog

her vitamin, carried a full bucket

of yellow corn to the deer house, watched

for the wave

of its flicking, white tail.

It was the weekend I came

home with blisters

in my mouth, chigger bites

on my breasts, laid hawk feather

on the dash of my car. I found

a rusted apple beneath the seat.

It was the week I pulled the nails out

of the blue carpet that you never said,

If you make it to the end with scars-- a toe

missing, you've lived well.

You said instead I'd need to replace

your mother's candle-- the one

that melted that summer

onto the table outside, the white

one youd kept on the mantle for looks.