Blessing

Lambs were bled here.

A horse was buried on this land
so we could stack a chapel over him.

One man caught him, rope-bound him,
unfastened all his teeth.

Two winters came, one after the next,
then everything was snow.

We lost our habit of expecting
flowers in the spring.

One May, the chapel horse
rose swiftly through the floor,

took the Christ child from the altar,
and carried him to woods

where sometimes, far from view,
trees would marry each other.

The maples were the ones
we liked to wound—

piercing bark to get the sap to drip,
boiling that to make a candy.

This was when a blessing meant
a sacrifice.

We said a hanged man blessed
the hilltop with his feet.