Alfalfa & cloves & the smell of cinnamon
coat your skin like fur, the sweat new & not spoiled
the condensation of the canvas water bag far off
alongside the cattle-truck, steers complaining in their pen
your work a panic to keep up, the orbit of hay a form of forever
your father shoulders hay bales to his neck, Wyoming
burning away all but chaff; you stumble under the weight,
bucking bale after bale, two hooks for hands, each punch
into the wet meat of them like a punishment; the hole
that rips away is a ball of rattlesnakes, the bale
is the planet you heft, the boil of the snakes is a moon.
Your father has a bale across his shoulders, his boots careless
as they twist & crush all that moves; these babies, you think, borne
toothless & without the cry that would be their god.
Seth Brady Tucker’s second poetry collection, “We Deserve the Gods We Ask For (2014, Gival),” won the 2015 Eric Hoffer Book Award. His first book, “Mormon Boy,” won the 2011 Elixir Press Editor’s Poetry Prize. His poetry, essays, and fiction have appeared widely.
