Schoolbuses

I saw it built,

the cowboys splicing the corral's

gray wooden fence posts into the landscape,

grunting in the ecstatic

grit of labor.

They forced milling cows through

the ramp

one

by

one

to be branded,

all of them in the same place

with the same pain.

I saw the corral razed.

In its place they built red brick houses.

At the entrance to the old ramp,

where the cows blew and blustered in some small

suggestion of agony,

a yellow schoolbus stopped,

paint slightly rusted off.

And I saw children

pack themselves in,

taken

to the same place

with the same purpose.