meat poem

Dry smoke floats over the wilting orchard,
coating swollen apples with heavy musk,
masking red cranberries, streaked rhubarb,
fat dimpled gourds in a hazy ash.
The henhouse, since '98, has had a chimney
stacked with clay and brick above the chicken-wire windows.
There is no hay or feathers, but billows, string, and salt.
The meat spirals on a slow spit, brimming in a feedsack
stuffed with fennel and rosemary.

Spices mashed under my fingernails, thick lard coating my palms,
I sit on the porch steps and smell my hands.