Dairy Farms Don't Make Good Neighbors

My nose itches,
aching
for the excrement and hay
assault to my nose,
tangy and sweet like that
first bite of the hard,
bittergreen apples growing on trees
more antique than the silver spoon
you found buried in the yard
or the rotted leather yoke made
of the same hide that pushed it.
The air is still here, suspended,
a Polaroid your dad took
before the camera broke in 1992,
a firefly in a jar
you caught with your brothers
one bruised July evening,
more still than the air
in corners of the basement
where the canned tomatoes are stored
glistening like preserved specimens,
except for the occasional whoosh
of a car returning from the bar
or the throaty distant bleat
of a cow in heat that makes
you think of rape victims
screaming for life
when your widow is open to the night.
Those dull meat-on-bone
sounds confuse you
but somehow have to do with
the great circle of life
and what mom plops on your dinner plate.
I entertain these quaint
fantasies, born backward by my brain.
I wish I could run in the rows of corn
ten feet from my bedroom window
when it soared for miles above my head
like it would never, never stop growing.
Like it would never, never be the hour of harvest.
But this time I promise not to hide while you call my name.
This time I won’t wrap my sides
in a blanket under my bed
to watch a dead lightning bug
and wait for my mother to come home.