They taxed her for indolence, told her to work,
she wouldn’t work. She preferred to hunt
out on tilted hills—shooting at beasts that
bellied the brushy clearings, beasts that
sunned on what-were-the-walls of our
Indian fort.
She’d rather hurl hickory axehandles,
practicing, ‘versing a well-faulted ring
of hickory smoke.
She knew all the times they chose to cruise past,
and chose to spend all of them drowsing, soothed
under footbridges—or in her lengthy reviews
of lands, atop county water towers.
-2005
