NOVEMBER FEEDING

The roads are treacherous and steep
up or downhill with a load of sweet
alfalfa—gear box low range—crawling
in and out ruts from when it rained
hard one year I can’t remember
in this dust, the flatbed creaks
and moans, strains against gravity
pulling from rocky bottoms. Up here,
the cows are always glad to see you
bring hay, to show-off calves
and wait politely, except the old girls,
the familiar and reliable you trust
to take care of you as they press,
flesh to flesh, against the truck.

It takes all day to feed a hundred cows
in the hills, all week to feed them all.
Plodding days with neither names
nor numbers in a dusty blur of months,
the dark square holes grow larger
beneath the barn roof. A man leans
against the empty black, quits
listening to grinning, fair-weathermen
and turns his back on the world
as he lifts another bale. All the politics
and posturing of the planet can’t
clear his lungs from a hazy daze
of alfalfa dust, can’t draw the mind
of man or beast away until it rains.