When I was in my early teens my Father would send me to my Brother-in-lays ranch to work through the summer. West of the ranch house was an old horse corral. All along the north side of this old corral was a thatched roof made of straw to provide cover for the horses from winter storms and summer sun. The problem with a thatched roof is that the birds like tunneling through the thatch to build their nests in the coolness of the thickest parts, which would never do, letting the rain through and rotting the straw from the inside out. Everything on the ranch was a struggle it seemed, from the smallest of things, things most city people never think about.
Preserving Shade
Way out here
there is stillness
between heaven and storm,
a stillness
that smells of gathering rain
through hatchet strokes of sunshine.
Here, lightning leaves
a sort of whittled configuration to things
just before God's tribulations
begins their misty decent earthward.
Way out here
west of the house
there is a sweet scent of rotting wood
that rings the old horse corral
borne below an old thatched roof.
A sort of mimic of relief
for the animals underneath
where starlings dig to find a little cool
from the summer heat
so their eggs won't cook
before they hatch.
Way out here
it takes a calloused heart
to keep from stopping dead
in a sudden spot
when the frustrations
of startled birds and storm collides.
Each taking headless to flight
at the first sight
of grief
when both eggs and chicks
are tossed to the family cats
by a city boy
whose eyes
were clinched as tight as fists.
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