FOR FAMILY

‘Traveling the same track
makes ruts when it rains,’
I tell myself, shoveling,

bringing future runoff back
to gutters and culverts
as if I might make a difference.

They hear me in their home
and come to the chainsaw’s whine
limbing a fallen tree on the fence—

old wire that can be spliced
and pulled up into place
only they will see, gathered

in rock piles above me
like Great Aunts, lifting
wet noses to a light breeze.

I left the house with salt
to see the cattle, check
the rain gauge, photograph

the grass ‘lest my memory slips
again and spins a yearning
into some other poem

for Winter Solstice 2014.
We are family, these cows
and calves, this wild about me

as I stack brush for quail
before I leave with Live Oak
limbs—come home with wood.

From dull light into the dark, we
will roast a rib between us warm
‘round our never-ending fire.