Photograph by Catherine Silks
SILO
A silo is a mouse-made thing;
the souls can’t get to heaven.
Swallows crap the corrugated steel,
rivets pop like rifleshots in the sun,
& the elevator, grinding, carries everything
into airless heat but a ghost of hope—
of mouse hope, mouse laughter,
fetor of urine & decay, dead fur—& dust,
the settle & sift of silage corn & sorghum,
the tonnage of wheat & oat & soy,
ever pressing, sinking—to a floor of stone:
of oat stone, barley stone, mouse.
Swallows heave the colossal blocks
on shoulders thin as paper.
________________________
José del Valle