Vallone di Sea at Gias Balma Massiet, Italy, 1500 meters By lichen-spackled stone walls Granario Fienile Hay loft above The pens Flagstone-slabbed roof still shedding weather To the tilt of the valley By the slant Of all that’s abandoned The gutter trough halving the floor Halves tipped to Channel waste to the cistern By no animal moaning No warm sprays of Urine No tinge of ammonia By silence No swollen udders No Scent of oozing milk No lantern gas jets hissing No scent of a daughter who Ran off to Torino Her city-bought perfume No goats nattering in their pen No man urging a cow into the stanchions No wife whispering Her rosary No pails No bail tweeting No muck- Heavy boots-suck But here is this long-dead fox A time-riddled Mummy Curled atop a long dried-out Heap of manure Her black flews frazzling loose from her jaw bones Her teeth worn dull and splintered Here is the picked bare shaft of her tail Per i nidi del cardellino By goldfinches Swallows Or swifts Here are the torn purses of her ears The dried-out tuners within Malleus Incus Stapes All the red breeze of her flown due to starvation Strychnine Tuberculosis Decades after combatants Plotted out fire lines and fought over this valley Scoped and squeezed off Shots at each other’s positions Ethmoid sphenoid Zygomatic frontal maxilla lacrimal Here are the empty cups Of the eyes of the most patient sentinel keeping Watch over the precincts of Always And ever While outside the blooming and buzzing continues And what finer prospect Could she ask for The meadow chest high in thistles—down valley gusts Tearing streaks of pollen from The flowers’ crowns like quick—frame summaries of chases she would run
ROBERT GRUNST is the author of two books of poems, The Smallest Bird in North American (New Issues) and Blue Orange (McGovern Prize, Ashland Poetry Press). His poems have also appeared at American Literary Review, The Iowa Review, Notre Dame Review, Poetry East and Poetry Northwest, Seneca Review, Tar River Poetry, Water~Stone Review and Whitefish Review. New work appears in the current issue of Willow Springs and is forthcoming in Mid-American Review.
