many of his posts tilted
like trees tired of the wind; wires sagged,
red rusted, but still jabbed the errant cow
when duty called
three quarters a century
he rode the same trail; of late,
he had gone afoot, the saddle too heavy
for him to heft
walking, he reconnoitered
the tracks with more care--hooves of his myriad steers,
a few equine signs of the farrier’s labor
still there, fast fading
his boot prints were
more numerous now, and sometimes
tamped down by the few beasts left
in his herd
across the line lay his dead
neighbor’s pastures, peppered with mesquite,
pocked by fire ant holes; no livestock grazed, but the giant turbines whined, white whipsaws slashing not timber, but blue sky
driven by the relentless winds,
they called to him, in chanted chorus, issuing a premonition:
one day soon, your fence will fall, and the path you trod
will bear no new tracks for other souls to read