Sometimes I think I can still spot you,
Staring off to the sunset, a silo dissolving into the horizon.
Can I still smell your tractor’s gasoline,
Melted into your skin roughened from work?
There’s a woman who still sees you every day,
Reading the paper and scoffing about the “No good liberals”
Or cleaning your pipe in the afternoon heat
Ashes littering the kitchen table around you.
Sometimes the fence starts to wilt in your enclosure,
Don’t blame the cattle for that.
I still remember the day you recycled them;
The shattered glass chasing the tires to the slaughter house.
It rained, and the corn was ripped out,
Exposing your concrete backbone
That now rests flat in the picture-covered funeral parlor.