the farmer wakes up early
he eats his breakfast late

the morning spilling like
broken egg yolk over the hills

in the barn, his dirt bike sits
under a brown canvas tarp

it hasn’t run in a coon’s age
the exhaust full of chicken feathers

he’s traded in the open road
for the neat pattern of a garden

the smell of burning rubber
no match for the scent of fresh manure

hands no longer gripping handlebars
but instead the slick handle of a pitchfork

shoveling hay into the open mouths
of bawling heifers and their spring calves

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