There is a time when fall shades into winter.
Leaves mostly down,
fields shorn close,
and at night the cold begins to bite.
The canning jars and drying racks are put away,
onion braids hang in shadowed corners,
summer's bounty glowing through the glass
in serried ranks on the shelves.
Now it is time to take down the gun
take down the bow,
and get the meat.
The young men learn
from their elders:
give such a death as you would have
for we all die someday.
They wait in the blind in the edge of the woods for the deer
follow the hay cutters with the dogs for the rabbits,
knowing to shoot true and straight
and he lifts the old buck's head,
and says thank you, your meat will feed my sons.
There is a young stag watching from the forest edge.
In the barn, it is the time for slaughter.
The little piglet of the spring is a great hog now,
and there is screaming, a gush of blood in his death.
The steer stares into her eyes with calm trust
as she raises the pistol.
This is sacred, too,
and she kisses his nose
when he collapses
light fading from his eyes.
She kissed her father like that
when he lay dying
a month ago.
In the spring,
they'll plant a tree over his grave.
The cycle goes on.
His grandchildren will gather apples
and laugh at the stories,
and he will live on,
memory in the stories
Body transmuted
to apples and grass
smoke and stars.
In the early-falling evening
smoke drifts on the wind
smelling of bacon and of sausage.
The freezer is full of white-wrapped packages.
He tilts his chair back,
finishes his coffee.
“Let the winter come,” he says.
“We are ready.”