Blank fruit slices
and the red-brimmed hat,
cow on her way to slaughter,
and she smells
buds and grapes and blossoms.
The cow knows the man
needs and the needs of the
cow are care.
The cow will be cared for and the man, fed.
The cow knows she used
to be milk and touched
every day by hands
that felt soft to her.
The peasant and the woman
go to work.
The sickle.
The hoe.
Peasants are peasants
and nose to nose are the
man and the cow,
cow nose a suggestion
and man nose pointing out
in greeting.
Everyone is red and green
and submerged.
My grandparents, one
was clerking at a drugstore,
one was building model planes, and both
walked faster than I
could through midtown,
the UN to Natural History’s totem poles,
east side to west,
to the theater,
and back to the hotel with the key
card, the first one dipped in and out to
open a door.
I saved the soaps that said, “Manhattan.”
My grandparents, who
recited during mass,
but I never knew if they
believed in God.
My grandpa who laughed
like squeaky springs,
my grandma who
seemed wary of loving us.
My grandparents who
ate plenty of fruit and switched
to margarine.
Their dogs always on the
floor, the needlepoint of the
brown sailor on the wall, and
the rows of graduation photos,
my endless aunts and uncles,
and I thought, Someday
I will have one, and
my hair then and my look
will say something about who I am.
My grandparents who knew
the rosary and crossed
themselves before they ate.
I watched.
They had deer in their backyard.
We watched for them at breakfast
from the high second-floor kitchen,
down the hill, the deer
might be there,
animals too big to be wild
and too thin to be strong.
There is so much red
you’ll be afraid of it going wrong.
The cow knows and
the face knows and
only one eye is necessary.
The man’s eye is
a dime.
The cow’s eye is zero.
The peasant and the woman
they are only going to work
but the cow and the man
have to look at each other,
and the green under them,
at least, makes the smell tolerable,
the smell of what happens.
The man wears a cross and
the church wears a cross,
and nobody’s about to die,
not yet,
not yet,
not yet.
Landing 