Poetry
Felix Thursday
Building Calluses
Summer in the field:
the smell of cowshit and alfalfa.
The highway traffic looks lazy at a distance.
Hay trucks stagger on the crumbling asphalt stretch
parallel to our place.
We're replacing seven acres of fence,
gnawed-on and pushed crooked by the horses.
Struggling to uproot the old posts and insert new ones,
stronger against impending nature. Reinforcing the barrier
time has made limp.
The holes for the posts must be dug
four feet deep. But the shovel blades careen
off the rock after stabbing down only a few inches.
My hands are shredded clay.
They've forgotten labor.
The August draught has sun-fried the ground.
Our shovels are useless.
The high desert heat is relentless.
We cough up dust as the horse's tails
swipe and miss at the flies and heat.
But the fence must be finished.
Dad sits in the shade.
Death carves at his cells.
His legs are too weak to stomp a shovel.
He watches us struggle.
The fence must be finished.
