Uprooted

Photograph by Vicki Day


Uprooted


It took all our weight to drag the chain
over the stump, my brother

and I heaving links heavy enough
to strangle hope. Our hands lost

in grandfather’s big work gloves,
slick grass betrayed our bare feet.

The tractor vibrated low. Hummed,
screeched, and began humming again.

Smoke marbled gray the blue morning.
Where we once played king-of-the-hill

on the stump’s weathered face, we now
played Judas with an iron-linked kiss.

Grandfather spat Red Fox
tobacco, feathered the clutch once

to tighten the noose. The engine leaned,
a runner into wind, as the chain notched,

deep into the wood, a lover’s
embrace gone shockingly wrong.

The stump shuddered, groaned, wrenched
from the earth and tilted skyward.

I don't know what we expected.
There were no secrets.

No ghosts. No magic. Only
naked roots torn from the earth.

We stood with hands at our sides,
lost in the tremor song of earth,

all of us, broken like a promise.
Air so raw, it scratched our lungs.

Days passed, until once more we
circled the stump. Each of us, secretly

hoped enough time had passed
for the love that married this stump

to earth to slip away. We then laid
axe to wood and released the rings.


Indigo Moor

Posted over on Freewebs
Previously published in Tap-Root.