Golden Shovel for Sanctification

After William Fargason’s “When You Were Out of Town Last Weekend”

Again, I’ve found myself here,
back in the pine clearing, back in the swamp. I

sat in the blind and hunted
all of the raging beasts, only

I was alone in the dusk and the beasts roamed inside myself.
I killed to be called a word I didn’t care to be, a thing which

loved blood and the gnaw of gristle, who knew tools and took
whatever he wanted from the sky. Me,

I tried not to cry when the fawn fell, but had to
when I put my stained fingers in the warm slug holes of its wheat-

tan hide. Squeezing the trigger left something in the fields
forever. I don’t go home much. I don’t know why I just called it my

home. Home is a place that gives you legs.
Home is the people that might cut them off, a name you could

disappear
into, the skin your spirit was spit into.

Isn’t this the home that most matters? The one with
a heart inside. The one you sing from. It’s a gift to throw a fistful

of words into the world, one’s hands in the air full of
nothing and say This is all I’m taking. The dirt

isn’t dirt. It’s soil. And love, I
am not about to steal anything from you. I filled

our pantry and emptied my piggybank. I took my
shotgun and buried it behind the barn. You put your mouth

on mine, your hands, both, in mine and
whispered what I didn’t realize I still waited

for, some washing my body had been begging for.
Look, a buck eating buds from a peach tree in yellow rain.