31 Jul Back 40: August Chores

Carving trenches from ageless grass
is a lonely ordeal beneath the far gray.
A careless horse will die in a ditch
so digging them wide will spare us the grief.
We toil in the earth in an aging machine,
no less weathered by time than the skull of a steer. 

Under sky made gray by pine smoke,
the archaic bulldozer creeps,
finch yellow paint falling in flecks,
giving way to steel rot below.
With common colossus we cut the earth,
pipes thick with centennial muck,
and dig up the copper-gold longrass.
The indifferent sun, gaze veiled by ash,
watches the machine labour on
in the noon dark.

A voice calls the driver and beckons him home
for a more urgent task has need of him.
He gives me the wheel and it is useless to me.
The screaming of belts and pipes and wheels,
the infinite rust that is filling my ears,
brings sweat to my brow that flame could not.

 The grass is dug up, and water will flow,
and horses can run without fear.
The fires will pass, and amid their ash,
flowers and morels will grow.
Autumn brings with it rain so the trees will drink
and the fires will slumber again.
From my place in the dozer I watch this dance
as I wait for the quieting snow.

Cyril Burchenal is a Missoula, Montana-based writer who grew up in the Blackfoot Valley.