then on others in all its glory full of stars bright and reeling
the full moon tethered round and white like a balloon

and I stood like Dorothy clicking her heels
looking up, dumbfounded

as it floated there just beyond my reach
big as your belly

11.

That fall my older sister and I found a litter of kittens
birthed in haystacks and by the scruff of their necks

pulled them out one by one and my black Midnight
got into the spring house and gorged himself

to death on rich cream and I learned
to be wary of too much of a good thing

Every day I walked through a pasture
to go fetch our only milkcow for milking

passing through a small herd of mustangs
they'd rounded up to remove them from the range

One morning father lifted me up onto Buck's
bare back and said I was no longer to go on foot

That buckskin gelding's cropped black mane was stiffer
than the bristles on a hairbrush and combed my hands

before I latched on, digging my heels into his flanks
and trotting past those snorting steeds

stamping their hoofs, ripping up the sod
their eyes wild and full of devil's fire

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