The Beef You Are Eating Today Was Transmission Oil Yesterday

               Published in Bellowing Ark Volume 17, no. 1, Jan-Feb, 2001

Dead pine tree at the edge of the meadow

with light green moss in its northern branches.

A red-tailed hawk stands on the sun-bleached top.

We cut wild meadow hay

bale wild meadow hay,

haul bales of wild meadow hay

down the graveled river road.

Forest fire smoke above the ridge

Sun, dimmed orange above the smoke.

Sickle-bar, driven by a reciprocating steel arm, which is

driven by a rod; by a wheel; driven by a chain; by a shaft;

impellers; shaft; pistons; explosions; diesel fuel;

oxygen, oxygen, oxygen,

and the big wheels turn and turn,

chopping down the meadow.

Cody drove forty-three miles

in ninety-eight degree mid-day smoke

for twenty-three gallons of five-dollar-a-gallon

number two hydraulic oil, to replace what sprayed,

in twelve and a half minutes, all over three tons

of our best, neatly windrowed, wild meadow hay

along the east boundary,

below Whitney Spring, where sage brush rises

on the sharply rising ridge toward mountain sky.

And I shaded up in deep grass

under the edge of the willows

growing densely along Camp Creek.

Hawks and ravens, coyotes harvest meaty delicacies

we've mowed with the hay.

Crane walks stately along the edge of mowed ground.

Motors on the highway. Machines on the meadow.

Trucks haul hay down the river road.

Chain saws on the ridge fall trees into summer dust.

Forest fire smoke above the valley.

Hot as smoke in the noonday sun.

Coyote eats mowed voles. He knows where I am.

Raven knows I'm down in deep grass,

man-in-the-grass, unarmed, torpid

as a rattlesnake in the heat.

Coyote and Raven laugh, the trickster and the thief.

They build a complex joke about man,

the engulfer engulfed, they share with their lunch.

Coyote sings about the hors d'oeuvres of destruction

and Raven says I cut the lilies from their fields.

Though I laughed minutes ago, the joke has gone macabre.

I am the fancy dancer, suspended.

The dancer is entranced.

The joker. The thief. The deadly fool.

Cody's back.

With oily tools, oily hands,

I cinch repaired lines tight.

Sweat runs into my eyes.

Hot sunshine.

Sharp, hot smell of newly mown

wild meadow grasses and flowers

thick smell of oil, grease, and diesel fuel.

Then I diesel down hay again,

mow thistles by the pond

when the sun sets behind Greenhorn Mountain.

Coyote's gone over the hill.

Raven flew toward the mountains.

Pine tree at the edge of the meadow

Bright green moss

Smoke

Red-tailed hawk above the ridge

Crane walks stately at the edge of the meadow.