Via Dolorosa
The sun has barely roused itself when I hear screams
over the coffee pot, but a glance out the window
thaws my dread. Just three teens raging
at the warm horizon. I know that cry—the one
my sisters and I hurled at the field in fledgling
heartbreak, our young throats yelled raw.
Yes, these girls threading through cotton
are mourning boys whose names they’ll forget
in a few harvests. Do they know to watch out
for mice and snakes? No—they imagine
out here’s a life without danger.
They imagine they race to mystery.
But it’s all science, really, learning how
the earth yields and heals itself. We step in
where we can with sweat, lost sleep, bruised thumbs.
But I’ll let them think it’s magic, that thorns
in their sweaters could somehow mend sorrow.
Sometimes I let myself believe the same.
By Whitney Rio-Ross
From EcoTheo Review
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At the blow of a whistle, each dog, one at a time, was let out onto the grounds and on its doggy way, snuffling the grooves and crevices of the obstacle course in the hunt for a swab doused in an herbal essential oil. The dogs moved evenly, steady as magnetic north, until they appealed to their handlers with glances that functioned like code. This dogsperanto—a language of punctuation marks, canine body cues in expressions of “?” or “!”—met human encouragement in a surrealist covenant between trainer and trainee. Woof begat nod, nod begat pursuit. The lagotto came to a halt at a traffic cone.
T
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