photo: ralph murre
Godot
Goes to Montana
by
Ellaraine Lockie
My
farmer father waited to see
if
crops would hail out or dry up
If
coyotes would tunnel the chicken coops
If
the price of grain would keep
me
out of used clothes
If
the bank would waive foreclosure
for
another year
After
hay baling and breech delivering
from
sunrise to body’s fall
He
slept in front of the evening news
Too
worn out to watch the world squirm
Too
weary to hear warnings from ghost brothers
who
were slain by beef, bacon and stress
Too
spent to move into the next day
when
he couldn’t afford to forget
how
Brew Wilcox lost his left arm to an auger
How
the mayor’s son suffocated in a silo
Too
responsible to remember the bleak option
my
grandfather chose for the rope
hanging
over the barn rafters
Never
too lonely because every farmer
had
a neighbor to bullshit with
To
share an early a.m. pot of Folger’s
To
eat fresh sourdough doughnuts
To
chew the fat of their existence
~
previously published in SLAB
(University of Slippery Rock)
