Fincastle Farm Fence Elegy

by Cory Crouser

After Wendell Berry

Tracks pinch at gates

he said

and I have seen it, too, here

at this sun-cast farm

two bright tracts of field laze

into a naked crease

of dirt: an old tube gate

goes crooked on its hinge

some flagship year before I'm born, 

falls open of a steady wind,

falls wide,

sticks its hard bent knee into 

a stiff-set pat of clay

for good, so far as I can tell,

and so the cattle enter through,

that simple breed who

animate this farm. It seems 

a dog I have not seen 

or sequence 

basic to this spill of grass

notions out a day 

in fall 

perhaps

when pasture still is ripe

or is in fact becoming 

ripe in iron red tournament of fall

to drive the cattle to that gate

of gates

whose courage or whose 

perfect fear, which are the 

same, reeks out from them in blood-

soured sweat: some

sixteen dozen head per year to

face the steaming bolt,

one fated set

descended from the rest 

before

all

born unto this ancient slant of earth

as us

in spit and gut-wrought 

wail

to live

as if to live

but know it all our hapless lives

twitching off the constant wind,

gasping uphill

that they return,

and so return

down, black hooves hatcheting 

the blood-

red 

clay 

in tracks

like strands of net 

he said

gathered up in fist of gate

down

to that far-flung gate 

of tubes

which pipe the never-ending wind

as song

and enter through

in fall.

On the other side of the gate I see no tracks and no one in the field which inclines toward the road. The fields are dead. The farm is dead. All remnant color is gone from the grass. Tonight, the leftover dungheaps will freeze. Tomorrow maybe it will snow.

When I started out this afternoon on chores, senseless work to distract from the disappearance of the cattle, Emily was in the bathtub watching a show on her computer. She had dragged in the piano bench to set her laptop on. Perhaps she's still there, although it's been a while, listening to the cold wind breach the house.

(In separate rooms we have seen it inch the doors. We clutch ourselves. The cold cuts in.)

Out here it is cold. The sun has set and there is nothing else to do. The gate still will not budge. My tools are dull and my hands are stiff with cold. I have been cursing the wind to the wind. My mouth is cold. What else is there to do. Emily is in the bath, skin of her face pink. I curse away. I go and kiss her hair.  

Beyond the gate is death.

I will live within these moments of my life.