Kasey Jueds

Protection Litany

Before the blur of car wheels, the moth-colored road
unrolling its bolt of silk. Before the child’s

red wagon abandoned to the unlit barn. Before
the hole in the quilt, its edges

mouthed by mice. The shoes made of iron
and everyone inside the castle asleep.

Come back. Before the black walnut tree, planted
too far north. I am leaving this here

before my tracks laid down in snow
blotting out the tracks of deer. A necklace

of breadcrumbs, or the rasp of mice
inside the drawer, inside the empty

house, their fraying breath of cotton
and hush, the winter’s first thin snow

announcing iron. Before winter. Before
winter then summer, the purple thistles

refusing touch, cortisol in the dead fawn’s
blood, the live dog unburied in bluestem. I am

leaving this here in the mouse nest made
of scraps, of softness once gathered close

to the throat. Before we could imagine
no more winter, before every word whittled

and thinned to stay. Before Once, the river
iced past ghost, all the way down

to whisper. Before every story
beginning with once.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Kasey Jueds is the author of two collections of poetry, both from the University of Pittsburgh Press: Keeper, which won the 2012 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, and The Thicket. She lives in a small town in the mountains of New York State.