MY FATHER’S LIVELIHOOD
By: Katy Zart
You’ve trudged on infinite hours.
The sun radiates scalding
your skin streaked red with the clay
of this northern tract of earth.
The chickadees fly south to their next chapter
yet you remain unbothered
by the passing of time, content
on one forty-acre fragment of land.
There are mornings when I wake
and watch you from the window and see
a harvester in holy communion,
kneeling, head down, above the land,
yielding beauty, nourishment.
Surrounded by every labored fence
and planted crop, tugging weeds
from the ground below you stand up
pausing to look—
the sledding hill at the woods’ edge
where endless winters were spent,
our single maple tree in the valley
where cattle flee for shade in the summer months—
Miles of your life spread out before you.
The panoramic landscape that causes
your hands, calloused and cracked to
become gentle, ready to nurture
existence, provide lifeblood.
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“LIGHT OF MY LIFE” By: Mae Stoutenburg
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