Is There Any Pain? This Question

by Jennifer Sutherland

opens up a space into which a person  

might step sideways, a squirming thing  

dropped mewling into the mowed-down  

alleyway of grass between the fencing  

and the field. It sits with me. All week long  

I hope the horses will acknowledge me, the red  

mother and her spotted child, but the closest  

I come to that sacred state is my solidarity 

with the barn cat stalking when I descend  

the porch steps. I think he hears the gravel  

crunching, confuses it with bone. Beside the bee  

balm, beside the bank of day lilies, beside a wind  

chime lying in the window well, beside the limestone  

underneath a yellow bench on which the word 

“believe” is stenciled, beside the yellow jacket 

dead inside the sitting room where I am, yes, 

sitting, I say no. No, there isn’t any such thing.