An angus herd and one white cross-breed cow
Fill up the shadow of a single oak,
And, since it hasn’t rained in over a month,
They almost disappear in heat and steam
That wavers upward from their salty hides.

The farmer passes them without a glance.
He walks so slow that you can see his pace
Conforming to the speed of cattle breath,
The speed of clouds. If he moved any slower
There would be no verb to him; he’d be
A noun, is all. And yet he’s both, a place
That places him.

He walks along a trail
That cows have cut by winding single file.
He’s going fishing, cane pole, cork, and worms,
The way he did when he was just a boy
And never quit.

It seems like every day
Somebody dies who used to fish that way,
By poling, wasting daylight’s precious hours;
Occupation for the penny-foolish;
Pound-wise pastime for the profligate.

Worlds of people he will never know
Keep racing past on highway 41.
Across the road they go about their business,
Moving faster than the clouds it seems,
Fast food, hotels, a grocery store, all lifting
Names for what they are on metal poles.

The farmer wouldn’t sell and wouldn’t sell,
So now his barn has been surrounded by
The pseudo-city of the interstate.
From there you notice how his window trim
Is painted orange for the football team.
His wife smokes cigarettes to beat the band.

At dusk his shadow thins and blinks below
The scraggly sycamores between his house
And tractor shed.

He’s caught a mess of fish.
The county health official told him once
He shouldn’t eat them since his ponds are tainted:
Seepage from the septic fields, and mercury.
He eats them anyhow. He doesn’t care.
Indifference is how he hates the world.

Don’t ask him what he thinks about the stores
And filling stations all around his land.
He wouldn’t answer. He would stare at you
And blink his eyes so all you’d see is how
The glint of evening sky combines with those
Florescent bulbs that start to buzz and click.

A truck gears down to make the long descent
To Nashville. Angus shadows trail away
To water just beyond the view of cars.
The farmer turns and takes his fish inside
Where he will hate you with a perfect hate.

—
Wilmer Mills