Pruning Burning Bushes. Sarah M. Wells

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СКАЧАТЬ the end, just Ohio.

      The Pigs

      Dad revived the barn—its siding stripped

      for a neighbor’s cabinets, the grooved tin roof

      rattling in wind on top of rotten trusses—

      he buried sagging basement cow stalls

      with Midwestern clay and silt, poured cement.

      A makeshift pen and pump raised up

      our three weaned piglets. I flung half-eaten cobs

      in their feeder, rubbed wet snouts,

      scratched behind ears, pet stubbled backs.

      They rooted, trotted, rolled, and pissed.

      We named them Buster, Pinky, Red, and watched

      with rested arms on rails for hours.

      They escaped one day—split the hillside,

      squealed and darted through the valley—

      freedom wild in frantic hooves.

      I chased Buster with a stick, the dog leash

      in my hand dragging through new top soil

      in the cul-de-sac. He left prints in bluegrass,

      clicked across asphalt driveways and startled

      Labradors on porches with his sunburned skin,

      until I caught him, walked him home

      past landscaped beds. We corralled the hogs

      into a truck backed up to the barn on Labor Day.

      The concrete floor is clean, a water pump

      drips and rusts. The barn cat slinks between

      some soggy bales of straw. Look through the gaps

      in slats Dad hung. A harvester shredded

      cornstalks here, silage suspended in the air.

      The sun hung long and bright above the trees

      all evening, shadows cast for deer to wander

      undetected through rows, acres of long, unending rows.

      Instructions for the Excavator

       for my father

      When you bury a horse

      for a neighbor, bring the backhoe

      over, dig a trench, tip her in—

      the daughter crying by her mother—

      when you find her stiff in her stall,

      you will have to break her legs

      so she will fit.

      *

      When you dig a basement

      ten feet deep, push away topsoil

      to reach into clay and scrape

      the scoop across a boulder.

      Send your brother in to measure;

      aim the laser, read a quarter-inch

      too shallow. Pound the stone,

      over and over—buckets are strong,

      excavator’s arms won’t fracture—

      pound the stone, and wait for it

      to crack.

      Junction

      There is no el train in Auburn, no steady rumble

      like thunder on a summer afternoon. Suburbans

      honk and veer behind my neighbor’s combine,

      pass, speed up to the light, line up at four-ways

      for permission to turn. The Cleveland and Eastern

      Interurban used to pass through here,

      the Maple Leaf Route curved slow through Newbury

      to Amish country, carrying produce and passengers

      in to the big city to see a show at the Hippodrome.

      Today, the maples shiver along the upraised curve

      as if a train has just passed through, but it is only me

      or the wind. I do not hear the click-clack on the raised track,

      the crowd of travelers standing in the woods waiting

      for the junction’s switch to take them north or further west.

      Now the forest and road are silent; last season’s leaves

      crunch beneath my feet. Syrup drips from its spile

      into cold, steel buckets. A car swings south down

      Munn Road, wondering at the slope in the woods

      and then the thought is gone. The sun rolls steady on its track

      across the blue, though I’m the one who’s moving—I

      and the farmer and the Suburban and the earth composting

      beneath my feet, faster than these fleeting minutes.

      How slow the shift in shadows. How soon

      I’m surprised to be chilled in the late afternoon.

      Consider the Sparrows

      “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?

      Yet not one of them will fall to the ground

      apart from your Father.”

       —Matthew 10:29

      So many come, Dad hides behind a blind

      with birdshot and a rifle in the grain field.

      They scatter, land, scatter, land. I hear them

      chirping through the boom, watch their flight

      ripple СКАЧАТЬ