As hot as I can stand,
elbows propped on squeaky knees,
morning showers stream my back
to penetrate and loosen the grip
of the great white cloud
claiming my spine
complaining before day begins.
I was not raised the easy way
of spendthrifts in town, learned
the value of a dollar an hour
shoveling the 1942 flathead Ford
dump truck full of loose red clay
to keep us busy between
moving sprinkler pipes
morning and night, all summer
on the 120 acres of green pasture
for weaned calves—we only dreamed
of machinery, of men on backhoes
my father didn’t need to pay
ten bucks when he had us.
All that character dumped
in a hole that needed dirt.
Twenty years my senior,
resting between bunches
of soggy A.I. calves
watching sons and wives,
grandsons and their wives,
reload vaccine guns, stoke
the fire and sharpen knives
as his great-grandkids hang
from the fence outside the pen,
he rises to tell me something funny—
just how happy
he is to be alive.
for Frank Ainley
drycrikjournal 