Old Roads, New Stories: A Literary Series
The Story of the Farmer
It’s hard work, meeting the needs of a region, so each day the farmer rose at four. He ate toast, poured another cup of coffee, then checked on his clouds, the cirrus and stratus, the acres of temperamental cumulus—all there stirring in their sleep, but all of them fine, maybe dreaming that the rooster wouldn’t crow.
If a cloud was ready to harvest, the farmer fastened a string, and his sheepdog, Mary, watched it lift with maternal concern, watched it rise, catch the wind, and take the slack the farmer kept spooling out. Then he’d fasten a string to another so there would be rain, enough that even ferns could grow, and buds could appear between bricks in the cobblestone walks from back doors to gardens. Enough for streambeds to know they had a purpose, and for the sun to seem brighter by contrast, and for robins on lawns throughout town to do their thing, pulling worms from the ground—Hop-stab, Hop-stab.
A good life, and meaningful, if it weren’t for the insurance: the lightning that had to be indemnified, and the supplemental policies in case of broken hearts if his rain was too beautiful, too lonely.
There were the ones, as well, needing land to build more everything.
“What would be the price,” they all kept asking, “to leash your dog, cut ties, and walk away?”
The Forklift Driver’s Story
There wasn’t a load the forklift driver
couldn’t steer.
Anything set on a pallet, he could stow—
any box, any crate you could imagine,
even spheres from that plant
with a dimwit running things.
The gears were like his own mind thinking,
and the forks and lever like his heartbeats,
’til one day, they asked him
to stack up all the news…
How many massacred this time?
With which kind of military rifle?
With how many rounds per minute
ripping through kids,
their teachers, parishioners,
and people dancing,
people pushing shopping carts—
No goddamn way that I can do this, he thought.
And what sort of country is it
where a person has to try?
Rob Carney’s first collection of creative nonfiction, Accidental Gardens, is out now from Stormbird Press, and his new book of poems, Call and Response, is available from Black Lawrence Press. Previous books include Facts and Figures, The Last Tiger is Somewhere, The Book of Sharks, and 88 Maps.
Read an interview with Rob Carney appearing in Terrain.org: “The Ocean is Full of Questions.”
Read Rob Carney’s Letter to America in Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, published by Terrain.org and Trinity University Press.
Read poetry by Rob Carney appearing in Terrain.org: 6th Annual Contest Finalist, 4th Annual Contest Winner, and Issue 30. And listen to an interview on Montana Public Radio about The Book of Sharks.
Header photo by JuergenPM, courtesy Pixabay.
