flesh to flesh

Isn't it funny how at spring equinox, I can milk in the light both times, but at fall equinox, more often both milkings are in the dark? It is more like, when I milk early in the morning, it is still dark; and when I milk regular time in the evening, it is dark already.

Ah, but the moon was up tonight. And lately the glow worms have been magnificent, like stars fallen to earth.

I remember when we first moved up here. I'm not sure I'd ever seen glow worms before. But we had rabbits down at the garden. I was pregnant with the eldest child. I still worked full time. And every evening, husband and I would walk together through the dark with the stars filling the sky and the glow worms filling the earth, hand in hand, down then back up the hill.

The little building where the rabbits were then, it is still there, now just a garden storage shed and home for wasps. It was the first thing we built on this land. We built it for chickens, and it was good but we didn't live here yet and, well, the end wasn't pretty for the chickens. Or the dogs that killed the chickens.

But before that, when there were maybe a dozen chickens in there, I would come sometimes after work to feed them before going home. One day I came and one was dead of natural causes. I didn't know then what to do exactly. I knew I needed to get her out but I thought I needed to bury her. So I tried. Something dug her up, of course. But what I didn't know then was that it was perfectly acceptable to just throw her over the side of the hill and life would take care of the rest of it, and fast. We had a goat die once in sight of my kitchen window and I watched and it was amazing. And in three days, it was gone except for some skin and the bones.