Inquietude, Ranch Style

Inquietude, Ranch Style
by Misti Rainwater-Lites
Same trees as yesterday stand around the death defying pond.
Life abounds but it’s of the inconsequential variety. In a lazy afternoon nap dream I was stuck in a warehouse somewhere in between West Texas and Mexico with other luckless transients.
We all smelled really humane in our cheap blue jeans, like human excrement and disco sweat. Border patrol
called out names.
Last words and rites were expected and allowed. I was braver in death
than I had ever been in life. I stood with arms outstretched in front of
a pleasant green bush and said,”Make pretty red berries, motherfuckers.”
My blood splatter decorated the leaves but it wasn’t anything at all
like an American Christmas. Jolly holly it was not. But golly gee Wally
it was fun, smirking in death’s anhedonistic eyes, having my say, dying
prouder than Grandma’s fluffiest buttermilk pancakes and floating above
shoppers still weighted down with lists and carts and stone heavy hearts
and eggshell fragile minds. Waking up at the ranch on a bed of straw I saw that the goats needed milking and the moon was up, making everything mystical and holy. Even the mesquite trees.
Even the cow patties.
Even my two clumsy
bare white feet.