Blistered Palms, Aching Shoulders

Putting up a Fence
Around the New Propane Tank
(An American Tanka)
The ground is so dense with clay,
shale, rocks, roots, that every heave
of my father’s wooden-handled pick-
axe arrives with a painful jolt,
blistered palms to aching shoulders
… but holes must be dug, posts leveled
and cemented before the stockade
fencing can be nailed up, all this labor
to hide what we don’t want to see
from the front porch, late afternoons,
drinks on the glass table, gazing past
the magnolia, across the mowed lawn
into the woods, so I keep driving the pick
into unforgiving soil, though it’s clear
we will still know the tank is there
after the fence is up, that nothing is hidden
enough in this life behind walls, will, work,
all the rabbit holes I’ve tunneled down
only to dig myself up to the same green yard,
shards of blinding sun, hand raised as shade
so I see his tattoo on my forearm, over there
the tractor shed we built two summers ago,
the ridge, as ever, visible through treetops,
branches cracking as some animal passes,
air warbling with the song of a Carolina Wren,
peepers at dusk, coyotes howling beyond
the stream, a hum out on the road, crunch
of tires, thunk and splash of rain-filled potholes,
headlights appearing from around the curve,
rolling past the hidden tank, coming to a stop
in the circle in front of the house
—SL, 28 June 2024, New Paltz, NY
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