Wyoming Litany

by BARBARA DUFFEY

Where do you feel the world’s sinews?

The close clouds at night. The Milky Way’s
birthmark on the stomach of the sky.

What wakes you?

Dawn’s grass blades each holding their pebble
of dew. White-tipped magpie wings.

What moves the wind?

Auburn down on new cows, red flaps emerging 
from a box elder bug’s black thorax.

Who goes there?

Sunglint on a neon sign’s unlit 
tube-bend, in daylight un-blue. 

How will you retrace your steps?

Voles, windfall brown, camouflaged 
in scurry dirt, away 
from the mower, gravel crunch under truck tires,
sloop of creek-on-rock. 

Why do you hold your head to your knees?

Carnation whiff of wild sage 
warming on sunbank.

Where does the dusk start?

I am fire’s figure study.
I bend against my weight of fuel.

When is the light right?

The stars’ black absence winged, 
large-headed, touch-close, then gone.