His spine curved just enough
to suggest a youth spent amidst a boring
landscape: brokedown corncrib, abandoned sty,
skeletal manure shed, a two-silo barn with one
sold off leaving a round pit
filled with rubble-where once the sweet silage
piled up and up now the brooding
ground of toads. And then the barn
began to buckle like an ancient mule falling
first to one knee, then both,
rear haunches still bravely, barely aloft.
Whatever hay left huddling in corners
more fossil than vegetable.
This landscape exists—in many
places–and is almost lovely,
even in, even in spite of, its decay.
It endures in histories
and in fiction: the crabapple, the gray
pastures, the dried dung
how many years old? —And atop the barn
a weather vane knocked askew by a rifle shot,
pointing straight up, as if all the winds
were going to heaven.
His Spine Curved Just Enough
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