Doug Roy, Wiejetze, Cut Paper
old chores
how many times
did I hop out
of that old international pick up
without shutting that rusty door
engine running rough
push open old, tilted, moaning gate
for a column of shorthorns
paced by blue ticks
and my cousins’ encouragement
hollering and catapulting behind them
played out uncountable times
on a deep creek bottom farm
in the same quiet july air
heavy with summer humidity
with the verity of being
tradition becoming the everyday
with little time for grieving the heat
as the same hills, bluff and draws
that echo our calls
seem to blend in a hair’s breadth with those
spoken a hundred years before
there lies here a universal sense of decency
and something to mourn in its passing
___________
Dan Jacoby