Self-portrait as a butter-churner

for your dream

Fungi-like white angels

with the dozen long clear wings

inside testicles, highly-magnified:

obstinate coils

with beaks like scythes—sweet-cream butter, or salted—

this is how I will know

if I can make a home. My great-grandmothers

in the Moravian salt marsh

gathered minerals

for their crystal mill—but was that enough to know

if they’d laid down the burden

to pick up a more natural responsibility?

Linked pinkies,

the edges of our closed eyes

like belts of wood beneath the cooper’s

certain ascending and descending hoops—

mouthfuls at the crank of the barrel-churn, of sweet cream

before the butter arrives.