A Thousand Deaths

A Thousand Deaths

the butcher

the hotel owner

her sister Something-linda (or was she Something-bella?)

the artist/farmer who made quince paste, jams, & wine

who found a home for my cat

her big-name son who modeled the clay bird

the young sexpot intent on finding a better-than-Argentina-wife life

the old woman who along with her husband owned the hardware store

who invited me to see her garden, whose garden I never saw

her husband who exchanged the shovel when the handle broke

the big man at the market who showed no affection

but gave me the best-looking vegetables & fruits

chose a round yellow goat cheese from the cooler, cut me half

the 5-kilo bags of unshelled peanuts

the tiny kitten threading through legs at the market

surely our cat’s cousin

the girls at the market who thought things of me I couldn’t fathom

their old mother with whom I chattered, we were the same old though different

the figs, the cherry tomatoes

the man at the notions store who filled our butane lighter

the woman at the notions store who helped me choose scissors & thread

a fruit bowl, a bicycle basket

the grill man who accepted a glass of beer

the restaurant owner who brought a bottle of champagne on our 20th anniversary

went for a third glass, celebrated with us

the woman who sold me a scratchy wool blanket

plaid colors I’ve forgotten

the woman who stopped me from buying linens at the department store

showed me better, thriftier items

the man who hand-trucked my purchases through 6-blocks of city traffic to my car

the man who sold me the sewing machine

the man who filled my plastic bottles with goat milk from the stainless tank

farm cats, muscovy ducks, goats watching me come & go

the artist who made my stained-glass window

the barn owl who flew full tilt at the picture window

the snake the cat chased, lizards the cat tormented, killed, left

the men who emptied the trash barrel

into the wooden-sided wagon hauled by the red tractor

the man who drove the rattle-bang dump truck, hauled away green trash

the man who filled a black plastic bag with oregano prunings to steep for mate

the toothless old man in the floppy black hat

who shifted dikes in the irrigation ditches for the alfalfa fields

25 years he worked on this thousand acres

horses who grazed the alfalfa fields

jumped the fence, whirled & cantered through billows of dust

cattle egrets who groomed the horses

my cat winding between the legs of the pregnant mare

each spring a spindly colt