We found them huddled and scorched, and their eyes Stared at death the way, I suppose, ours would. The silence is so loud when something dies, And it never has come to any good. Their manes were stiff as bristles, then the boys Took them to be put away like toys. The Burned Barn Crows bend in the air like stripped umbrellas. Too quick to rot, an axehandle has been charred into the shin- bone of anything that couldn't leave itself.
Tilted slats are the tobacco-black teeth of drunken farmhands.
Their fingers claw at the weakened boards, almost anxious for decay. Hinges creak louder. The rickets of old things make them snap at any sound. The caught owl swings pendulously, alive in its silence and dead in our hands. The trees, varicose, haven't yet known their foliage.