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As the time changes

leaves bail out


of the Locust

floating yellow
on the water.

Twilight enters
quietly spun
in skirts and stays
of cotton-pale fog.

Poised
in the feminine stillness
of many years past.

she listens
to the ghost dance
of swallows
haunting the barn.

Their wings flapped


under the weathervane steeple
that evening

when a farm boy's leg


was stitched together
by a midwife

who knew little


about sterile surgery.

The woman plied


her needle and twine
in a concrete stall
meant for cattle

The rancher's daughter


held a lantern, hoping
he would not loose
his limb -- days later
when gangrene could nest

near the bone


and a fetus could bloom
from a mass of seeds.
What would she do,
unmaried girl, if these worries
prospered?

Her eyes glanced up.


The birds
would soon migrate
to a garden
of cactus vine and dry wind

where Frida Kahlo painted,


posessed a wild skill
for unleashng pain or love -- no shame.

If only she had known how.

Then her head turned


and she looked through a window.
The lake rippled

straining to clear
the jaundiced leaves
and make clean room
for a drowning.

Note -- Painting is by Itallian artist,


Walter Girotto.

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