Its Song Across the Pastures

by John Brantingham

To the woman, that far off whine sounds

a bit like the nuclear air raid sirens

they ran in her girlhood.

That was the city in the 1960s,

and this is now way out in the country.

She doubts that anyone

would bother alerting the cows

even if they still had those alarms.

It is probably just an autumn breeze

catching the edge of a steel barrel,

something like that, but the Cold War

still plays its memory terror inside of her.