blue hog
he grunted
and stood still
the eye watching me
focused and listening
the hog eye
600 lbs breathless in the mud
caught in the world like a blunt cloud
wire fences lined the horizon
conquering the dust eddy county one whistle at a time
basket weeds in triumph waiting to run rural roads
hobble and nap on the meridians
intent as railroad tracks and huge night freight trains
that shake and machine their way though the
brief noise of these small eyeless towns
i loitered at the hog pen with
nothing pressing
no alarm calling any action out in the copper fields
no roads meeting at any soundless urgency
agricultural workers wandering the evening markets
covered like muslim women with scarves and dust
some with huge scars on their forearms
some with beautiful eyes
i threw the feed in
it overflowed the troughs
he ate
i filled the water hatches
and leaning on the fence
shirt open
with all that swirling ripe world behind me
letting my eye wander the cool halo sunset
thinking of the dark daytime vistas of almonds groves
i breathed in the rising earth
let it wash over me like miles of
darkening fields all bowing to god
in flushes of torrents and rest
and watched him for a while
the next day
i returned on my obligatory trek
he was somewhere in the pen
snout puffing dust
eye watching me
finally convinced by the
pour of the food
he came slowly
i reached and scratched his ear
he felt it
then in the food
he ate
his vigor returning
it was an instinct i understood from my own hunger
an action developed in the incense of poverty
i went to get the water hose
seeing him from the side then
his testicles were gone
hacked off
blood on his hams and hoofs
no one had told me
they had come during the day
assessing room in the freezer
bantering about the smoking
and curing of meat
i saw their footprints circling the pen
saw the cigarette buds flicked near old tires
beer cans laughing on fence posts
they would be back in a few days
when he was free of testosterone
when his rebellion spun unattached
and withered in the drowning autumn
two days later
in the fever of the autumn dusk
he was still there
the slow eye watching
mud unmoved
puffing in dust
he knew he knew he knew
i opened the gate
bade him leave
threw rocks at him
cursed him
he stayed
frightened by me now
his weight anchoring him
his mouth
the coming night
an errant plane coasting miles overhead
shadows moving like industrial tractors
and killing the pastures
“go and die”
i yelled
“let them come
oblivious to your little life
let them come
smoking cigarettes
and cursing their wives
let them come
absent of incense
in a liturgy of hymns
and let them come
with their mounting infirmities
wearing their absurd hunger
dreaming of tractors and war”
he stayed
puffing in the dust
powerless as a dream
i think he knew that
and i am coming to know that
all men’s faces are strange
and that the blue wall of night
would extend forever
and that maybe in his pen
with his roots and mud
in silences stirred by heaving wind
stars don’t actually move
and that the ghost of his tomorrow
sits moaning beside the road that
leads to the prison
where men kill as a solution to their discomfort
and are butchered by the state in several official languages
and that hogs were made for butchering
and instinct does not exist beyond that truth
in men or in hogs
and that i was just the caretaker
just any boy with my concerns
a something without language
lofty as the moon
that belongs to no one
but seems to be
staring only at you
