Marc Harshman
Sacred
It’s the week before Thanksgiving—hog butchering.
Angst of the angels, the barn pigeons cooing excitedly.
The ground is slippery with frost and mud.
The women are baking bread and pies.
Knives are honed.
The football game rehashed.
A single shot between the eyes.
A twenty-two enough in hands as practiced as Lloyd’s.
I know Mother Earth says a blade for dispatch
but it’s the old ways here, not always the best,
but it’s what we know
and what we know seems to work.
I vow to be silent and useful.
The stench when the intestines spill out into the cloudy light
unsteadies me but I cling to a slender memory
of my father doing these same things a generation ago.
Like a glistening pile of steaming white snakes,
they settle onto the black ground.
The steady slicing and spillage, the parceling out
of organs and trotters, of what’s for us, what’s for the cats,
and what’s for the earth
is done
as it always has been done.
There are no prayers, and the ritual is habit.
It’s for someone else to decide whether sacred.
We wash at the old pump and go in to sit at table.
I notice, then, how the white crusts of the pies
are vented and steaming.
I choose the chocolate cake.