Shanley Wells-Rau

A grieving llama sits below a dripping tree,
her legs hidden under a brown
shaggy footstool of a body.
Her jaw keeps beat, chewing in rhythm
with blueberry bushes waving at geese
in the gray Pacific Northwest wind.

The white honking fowl are now
her only animal companions.
Their alarmist shouts
amplified inside her long elegant ears that twitch
and twist fine-tuning the channel for sound.
She likes to nap at the far end of the pen
under that tree where her mother was buried
two weeks ago
on the edge of the shadowed forest.

Those noisy geese wake her many times
during the day and night.
Each awakening, again a surprise,
when she remembers
she is the only llama
on Holly Tree Farm.