Cold Pastoral. Rebecca Dunham

waves, merciful as death.

IN WHICH SHE OPENS THE BOX

       Celia Steele in Delaware, 1923

       1.

      Even as a child I hungered

      for them, fox in the henhouse,

      my mother said. And a whole lot

      worse. When I opened the box

      to 500 straw-padded eggs instead

      of the 50 I ordered, I wasn’t

      thinking waste not, want not

      or, a chicken in every pot.

      I was thinking how I’d grown.

      Thinking of life, and how

      can anyone argue with that?

      The yolk’s yellow chalk afloat