At the corn pile my brother-in-law leaves for the wildlife

Marianne Worthington

Cottage Book: Deer in Woods | Breehan James

First light: the turkeys come. Maybe a dozen
hens carve their way through the woods flanked
by a lone tom who struts and makes a big deal
of his tail feathers. Then the bands of deer
who practice gender separation at feeding as strictly
as any Southern Baptist Sunday School Class.
The morning is chopped by the cardinals’ cries,
the crows telling it loud in the trees. Woodpeckers
hammer and watch for an open spot at the corn pile.
I watch it all from my sister’s kitchen window
while I wash up last night’s supper dishes, my desires
pooling in the tepid dishwater, greasy and gray,
no longer any count for scrubbing away these stains.