Contributor: Donal Mahoney

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She walks the rack of bright frocks
as her husband, an Angus aging,
paws at the carpet behind her.
She wants the right dress

to make verdant again the hills
that summers ago
brought her young bull
into her valleys.

Now he needs prodding
even to graze.
Now she no longer

has to rope off
what he used to rip up.
Now he causes no pain.


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Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.