Fain Rutherford went to college in Virginia. Over the years he has worked as a soldier, lawyer, university teacher, rock-climbing guide, wilderness survival instructor and at-home-dad. He currently resides in Washington State. His poetry appears or is scheduled to appear in Tidepools 2013, Subliminal Interiors, Right Hand Pointing, Poetry Quarterly, and Eunoia Review.---------
Taurus at the Strait
The wheelbarrow is rusted utterly
brown on the bluff, propped bottom-up
against a moss-bearded rail fence.
The barrow handles angle out over the water
toward Canada, like horns of a single steer
recalling the missing herd, and how it was
on the long walk up from the Llano…
Some of the others thought they knew a short
cut, and just disappeared in the shimmer.
Some dried out like frogs on a hot rock.
Some gave out swimming and drowned -
too much water instead of too little.
Some snake bit, froze, or just tired out
and tipped over. They’re still back there,
spread out like low-humped trail markers.
The imagination lost weight on the way.
After awhile, there was only the sound
each hoof made as it landed; a dry click
or a scrape on rock, a flat slap in the dust,
a wet kiss in the mud. Each step
a slow call for the next. Each step
a pulse up the bone to the horns,
a bolt down to the earth’s core…
The rest of the herd’s all gone now.
Here, where the land stops sudden,
the rusted steer leans emptied
and unused against the greening fence,
horns angled north over the gray wet spread.
The wheelbarrow is rusted utterly
brown on the bluff, propped bottom-up
against a moss-bearded rail fence.
The barrow handles angle out over the water
toward Canada, like horns of a single steer
recalling the missing herd, and how it was
on the long walk up from the Llano…
Some of the others thought they knew a short
cut, and just disappeared in the shimmer.
Some dried out like frogs on a hot rock.
Some gave out swimming and drowned -
too much water instead of too little.
Some snake bit, froze, or just tired out
and tipped over. They’re still back there,
spread out like low-humped trail markers.
The imagination lost weight on the way.
After awhile, there was only the sound
each hoof made as it landed; a dry click
or a scrape on rock, a flat slap in the dust,
a wet kiss in the mud. Each step
a slow call for the next. Each step
a pulse up the bone to the horns,
a bolt down to the earth’s core…
The rest of the herd’s all gone now.
Here, where the land stops sudden,
the rusted steer leans emptied
and unused against the greening fence,
horns angled north over the gray wet spread.