They stand before their fireplace, logs cut in summer from the eastern woods and split in measured lengths burning hot behind the clasp of hands, the offered backs of trousers.
There is humor, always humor, even when the crops come up wrong, when rain neglects the sandy land. Words like grass burrs stuck in old socks fall softly to the wood of the floor—springy wood unevenly sawed twenty years before. It holds the words and it holds the walk toward the door, toward feeding time and milking time and time to slop the hogs.
Oh, the oaks at the gate, the porch that catches wind no matter how the summer heats. The red dirt and the brick chimney boys hide behind at night, the well and the bucket you raise the water in. The burn of shadows, secret joys in the bottom lands you know are there. Know feeling, know laughing, know running, are.
Spicewood, May, 2003
