March 10, 2023
Poem by Lillian Emerick Valentine
Pastoral With AgroindustryAfter the branch broke and the old
pig pen split I wasn’t thinking
about James Wright but how hard
it was going to be to pull the good lumber
out of the muck of it. By then the pigs
had all been slaughtered, my job
was to feed them, but I’d been foolish
and named each one, given them sweet
spoonfuls of molasses as I touched
their coarse hides. In the end they followed me
like dogs, bared their bellies
for brushing at the rusty noise of me
opening the gate. But I resist
regret. Stay instead in the moment
where, cleaning the wood, my winter work
boot was sucked into the muck and for one
endless second my bare sock sat
on the surface of it. Peeled back and began
again. My mud-slicked foot sliding
in its boot. That winter by the river
I pulled dozens of crates of rusted metal
from the floodzone, saw the somewhat rare
Pacific Giant Salamander under a tractor tire,
marveled at the huge muscled tongue of its body, drove
a flatbed gas-gaugeless into the rain. Sometimes got stuck,
called the foreman. Peeled out and began
again. Tow hitch to hook. Clocked out
and back in. On the rare day the sun struck
out of the sky I could stand in the gravel
lot on lunch, basking in it. Warm cracks
barely splintering the mud. When the pig pen
was picked up and the metal re-stacked
they spent a long time drying. I was driving
around looking for things I could do
in the cold, cleaning up plastic poly cover
and dragging it to the dump. It was past
the seasonal burning and onto the endless
wet. On the drive home the heat
blew into every hollow part of me, then the next
morning, when I began again.