Stone City, Iowa

If you listen, you can hear them.
Children playing hide-and-seek
behind the domed hill, chasing
in the cleft between.
They hunt larks' nests, run after rabbits.

Unseen on the far side of the shadowed grove
they dare to walk the river's edge, balance
on teetering logs across the shallows, sink
water-striders with rocks round and smooth,
smooth as the hills of home.

Behind closed doors the women are busy
at rows of jars, putting up peach halves.
They polish windows, do mending, wait
for their men to return.

And then the evening comes again,
a sigh--the last meal done, another
day over. Children out the door once more
call "olly olly oxen free" in the blind dark.

There was sunrise, sunset then--bright and dim,
sun and moon--both sides.

© Carol Brockfield

Adephagia

Pudding-nosed,
wattles hanging like goose liver
under a hard-set chin, disapproving
mouth,
she worries.

It's puzzling.
Just what distasteful remnant
does she dangle here--between
suspicious thumb, reluctant
finger?

Eyes narrow in appraisal.
Aged slice of bacon?
Long-dried gherkin?
Discarded manhood?

Her bosom, full and ripe
as the rest of her is pickled,
swells with hunger
that would see him whole
once more.

© Carol Brockfield