pit silo
The sweet smell of diesel smoke
Mingles with the sour scent
Of the freshly chopped corn
Being packed in the pit silo.
I sit on the Case tractor.
Joe’s behind me on the HD-5 bulldozer.
The dozer spits out the sweet exhaust
As Joe pushes the newly dumped corn
Up the hill for me drive over to be packed.
The process is simple.
In the fall
Fill the pit with corn until it becomes a mountain.
Cover it with black industrial plastic.
Weigh it down with used and worn black tires.
Let it ferment and bake over the winter.
Drawing from it when the hay runs out
And the cows need to be fed.
With me on the Case tractor.
It’s all back and forth
Like the clickety-clop and lickety-split
Of the cowboy boots
I wear that summer.
Like the rhythms of the country songs
Coming out of KRAK radio in Sacramento.
This late summer
I’m working with my brothers and dad.
I lean on the accelerator.
As I guide the tractor down the hill.
It’s a reversal of direction.
I’m careful that,
Careful that,
Careful that I don’t burn out the clutch.
My sisters are in the barn.
The milking barn.
A pneumatic symphony of expelled air
Fomenting the squeeze-release milking from the titcups
The hard sounds of metal stanchions opening and closing.
The sunk-sunk of cows being fed from the grain dispenser
Dumping grain into the mangers below pink cow snouts.
Landing into metal managers made
From severed half sides of steel oil barrels welded together
The grinding whirr from grain
Being along being moved along metal flumes
With an archimedes screw
To the grain dispensers.
AM radio plays over us all…
A Giants game on KFSO,
Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 on Sunday mornings,
KFRC playing the “sounds of the city”
I’m away from the barn.
I’m away from my sisters
I’m away from my sisters work.
I’m on the big equipment
With my brothers,
Their rhythms
Their perception of time.
On the big equipment now.
Back and forth.
Over and back.
Acceleration and Deceleration
A binary dance.
My brothers and I will stop at dark.
Dump trucks will be parked
The bulldozer will stop its shudder
And my dad will shut down the corn chopper.
All of us unwedded to any clock.
I wear my cowboy boots.
A window is open
I’ll become a farmer
If someone takes me under their wing.
Wanting to follow and fly.
Taken under a wing.
I’ll be a farmer.
Follow and fly.
I am wanting to work.
To learn how to weld.
To learn how to drive the cattle truck.
To learn how to repair a clutch.
Drive the HD5.
Wash oil off my forearms with gas.
Cruise School Street on Friday nights.
Wanting to follow and fly.
Taken under a wing.
Back and forth
The Case tractor moves back and forth
Keep the reverse gear engaged.
Don’t ride the clutch
