divine dagger

Suddenly the trees are blooming and it stinks like the The Valley. I can hear the angry cows where I’m crouched on the concrete ramp. Yesterday she pointed at one of the blooming trees and exclaimed how beautiful, I see her pointing in these as well. Every tree, small face, teeth, pointing. The cows groaning from over on the other hill sound much too close, that sound and that stink. At lunch I’ve considered stopping to see the calves, but always something else going on. A little ledge over which I never cross. A type of small daily precipice. 

Two flocks of starlings pass over head, sounding like metal birds. Small metal clanking, bolts turning in their sockets, little steel tabs. This is a false land, this swath here. The squat looming versus the flat green lumpy. I love you I love you touch typed back at the desk. I speak with my grandfather on the phone multiple times in the parking lot, my mother says “talk to him before he no longer recognizes you”. His hair is longer, I say I’ll see him in the summer, “deine ist viel länger, Sommer, ist das bald?” We are both much too entrenched in our age. 

I hear sirens over on the other hill, the green hill. So many sirens, the angry cows, the clean expanse. I expect the cows are on the road again, needing herding again. The medicine is dry. I tried to take it no water in the car. The lot out here is windy. I tried to understand it at a distance, with the sounds it made and the items passing hands. I didn’t learn anything. 

I dream about the man that owns this land, bought it for the mineral rights. He hung that banner from the lamp post that flaps like bleached ripped jesus in the fog and setting wind. The field is empty and green because one day he will need to dig. He will put an ad online and bring men to dig and fill into buckets. Who combed my opa’s hair? Who will comb mine? 

On the leftish hill stand three objects: two palms and a billboard. Big advertisement for hill for sale, the second green hill. No minerals there, just the two palms and the billboard. The palms throw two thin legs of shade down the near side of the hill. The grass doesn’t make sound, only the cars and beeping, metal clanging from the warehouse and the birds. The cows, also, when they’re close and angry, make sound. The first hill has a clump of oaks in one of it's folds, looks like it’s embarrassed. As though it’s shrugging away, the clump so embarrassing.