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
