Lisa Isaacson

Marmoreal Freezer
for Peter

I contest my delight and shan't be free,
Nor gift simple nor come down ought. Where
an extension of cottonwoods, radiant fog aheap
land marked for the various animal sciences.
At shaky windows, I turn my caretaker
hand in a broken cleaning
rotation. When I have children
how few stories I will have, how few ghost horses break away
clumsily on frozen ground.
A rusted plow, buried up to the hard seat of the past
I see in snow. Who used this thing last?

I hear it is way below zero,
No change in the radio,
as the animals agitate
around their heated water trough, surging on-sound
of the fence vaguely escaped down the long drive, and as if a thought
of my future, sure
enough awake,
the unlatched breath of a babyesque
loosely nooses the base bulk of the foothills
and yanks my looking up. No correction.
I do my chore, unfit for feeling
For animals at some sick point. In my life, and in exchange
For rent, I've taken a former farmer's
coffee can's rusted edge in a city mitten,
Horse's runny nostrils, his white watry eye
Behind me, Too-
Hungry, the one I
come up with for time spent, and

Scoop in a
Motion to avert eye from infestation,
small hushy mice in the grain bin.

So cold the snow squeaks
I shove in a door swell
Smell thaw and house food

I rested up in a camper quality bag
Flung in front of the wood stove efficient
And flame fast in medieval cantiga,
maybe two minutes' worth of

today's forced task to acknowledge
a real material deafness in one ear, and
Crumbling sight, the frieze's agony horse and impending

One gallop
Whereas he created countless