The Pigs
symbolize for me now
the hell
that was the year that just fell away
a year now spent and in ruins
dropped off like a golden husk
dead cobra flesh
summer sugared flakes of skin,
torn with teeth from a wintered mouth

The Pigs were an omen on that day
last January
day of first blizzard and weather churn,
sleet and howling,
first day of white knuckles and prickling thighs,
first day of numb chins and jowls,
thick and gummy feeling against hands

dead and uncovered in the back
of a grisly pickup truck
The Pigs came into existence,
piled ten feet high and fifteen long,
bodies jutting stiff and macabre
reaching for the sky, blank and indifferent.

I remember being disturbed by their enormous heads
and the way the ice formed a crust over their bodies
binding them one to another-snout to useless ***, milky underbelly
to back
creating not a pile
but a mass.
Somewhat
globular.

I watched
mesmerized by them in their sorrowful death bed,
gliding over black ice down that empty leg of highway,
black beautiful forests woven into color hungry sky
and chalky fields on all sides
devouring sound
I felt numb and small on the back of that prairie stretch
In my blacks and my wools,
gut colored scarf around my throat
Stuffed into my panting mouth
Breath freezing to the yarn and to my lips
Cold wet song escaping me
-my protest against the freeze that held me
Music about wolves against my ears-the haunting lyrics
Stumbled upon by a man with ancient desires, the need for
Animal blood, stone dwellings and strong women

This collage woven by the senses
Became me in that moment
For me a holy moment-every piece of me engaged and
Acute
Body clenched, mind awhirl, ears ringing, eyes filled with white

And then The Pigs whipped past me-in their resting place of crusted steel and chipping
Paint, their eyes clenched like hundreds of tiny fists,
Their mouths open and crookedly petrified
around the last breath of their lifesong
Their flesh as pink as the day they were born
Their minds and organs preserved by the patient
hands of Manitoba winter
The smell of death was imagined then-I was
Stricken by the harsh, wet scent of flesh
Against the back of my throat it lingered for only a moment

In that moment I was complete

I blinked and The Pigs were beyond me-one hundred miles an hour
to nowhere beautiful
And I was left with a sense of awe and a thousand questions
Death riding my thoughts
Hand against my padded heart

I moved forward in time-caught my ride
Which followed the tracks gouged by
The ***** pick-up for a little while
Something small and true stirring within me
Protected beneath all of my meticulous layers
A new awareness of something
dark and curious in the world.