“household gods inside” ~from the poem“Melpomene,”* Anne Waldman in Trickster Feminism, p.55.

What household gods inside
the cow’s half skull?  Great forehead bone,
eye holes all that remain and next to it
section of upper jaw, blunt teeth.  Grass

still grows everywhere around here, leaves
raked from this section of the hillside rock
garden, blue and white star flowers bobbling
between limestone rocks, granite’s quartz

extrusions, some years growing right through
that empty orbit where the great bovine eye
gazed as she grazed, as she lay down
in rumination….these things I chew

as with gloved fingers, small clawed tools,
I comb death away in this endless April
dream.  O Earth Mother, forgive us
our slaughters, the wounds you suffer

beneath our blinding cruelties.
                                         4/10-11/2019
* Melpomene, Muse of tragedy was one of the nine goddesses of music, song and dance.  Her name was derived from the Greek verb “meaning ‘to celebrate with dance and song.’” https://www.theoi.com/Ouranios/MousaMelpomene.html