Long After Harvest

Stacy Boe Miller

garbanzos forgotten by combines
dance themselves to dry
rattles. And among them you

searching for bits of blood that reveal
themselves on a sugar dusting
of snow. Three shots and you didn’t know

you had hit until you saw the map
of red on white. All day you hiked
to find him and bring him

home. You imagined bone
broth in my pot and a winter of full.
You also imagined that buck

stumbling the Palouse,
bedding down in weeds
still warm and bent

by his body, but nothing,
and you coming to the edge
of the field where the snow ends, the drops

blend in. You wandered
long anyway, came to me empty
handed and wrecked. I loved you

in that moment wanting to do
your due diligence, do right by this other
residing within miles of the room

where we sit by a fire with our kids and try
to nourish some kind of life, speak
of what it is to steal our sustenance, move on,

but that buck won’t let me be. I feel his sharp
pressing under my skull
a need to flower himself into antlers,

his twitch in my thighs and desire
to know the loess of these hills crumbling
beneath my legs as we outrun,

as we hold in the blood
we have been letting slip, wanting
so desperately not to be found.