Tipton Poetry Journal – Winter 2022
Neither Kindness nor Cruelty Victoria Twomey though the man was sure he had taught her a lesson she would never forget with the orderly cut of his sharp metal plough the Wild, in no hurry laughed as she kept time with her flying dandelion clocks her circling hawks her loyal following of shadows she was a being he did not understand who spoke with doppler’d wing songs slimy croaking toads one-note owls she was a self-sufficient metamorphic who understood the history of the wind what it might bring what it might take away having axed his chickens fenced his cows mastered his porch-dwelling dog and the horse that pulled his plough the man was sure he could command her to follow his seasons of need she was patient with his folly knowing someday with her slow and inevitable entanglements her clever raccoons her hungry moles and rabbits her legions of stem borers pod suckers, aphids and weevils she would reclaim his ordered field
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