DREW BLANCHARD

Not Whiskey

At dusk—west of Patch Grove—
two bison become an electric fence,
a fox, a question about crossing the street,
yellow circles of fallen leaves, a flower
arrangement that turns love again to lust.
           Four hundred miles east the bison,
lost in wandering, witness a son
bankrupt a bar, bust the town of Black Wolf,
fold the farm as metal folds in train wrecks.
The bison, alone again in wandering,
are not box knives, not crows,
not a soiled sheet, a trailer-park-storm.
They do not go into the woods alone.
They are not a last dance, drunk,
not a blue jay, not whiskey, not a time clock.