BONE MOON

 

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When a cow dies in winter, 

she’s hard to burn and this one’s too old 

for hamburger. Since we don’t

have a backhoe we tractor her out

to the woods: the odor won’t be terrific

but coyotes should do a lot. Except

they don’t. Come spring the horses

won’t mind and the dogs bring her home

bone by bone. Et in arcadia ego.

The internet says we can boil them,

sand until every pore goes white

and sleek as polished concrete, cool

as the January moon in my hand.

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BIO:

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​Sarah Barber is author of Country House, winner of the 2017 Pleiades Press Editors Prize for Poetry, and The Kissing Party, published in 2010 by the National Poetry Review Press. Her poems appear widely, and she teaches at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY.

 

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