B. J.       Buckley

Agnus Dei

Crows watch us butchering lambs
in the spring, how we decide
which infant will live to be a ram,
which ewe-child will never give birth
to twins. They measure us measuring meat
against hunger, they want
the entrails but will not
beg, they are patient
and dark and unrelenting,
they know each grief
aches to be a river
cutting down through red geologies
of flesh to the broken
bedrock of bone.