BJZ Poems and Musings

It was not uncommon in my boyhood in rural Western New York state to see barn exterior walls painted with the advertisement for Mail Pouch chewing tobacco. Our Uncle Earl’s barn was so adorned. After he died it was eventually torn down. Earl owned a number of draft horses over the years. Some of them aged with him. This poem is not strictly what happened with Earl and the barn and the horses, but I imagined it from the viewpoint of the horse talking to a barn.

Swaybacks

Your barn stall was nice
Stone walls, cool in summer,
Warm enough in winter
If Earl put down enough straw.

They say I’m a big Belgian crossed with who knows what.
I came out gray – dappled they say. That sounds like apple!

Strong, could pull ten logs by myself, until I couldn’t;
Got grayer, hay cough, and my feet, poorly tended, smell rotten.
My back curves now like a clothesline hung with wet overalls;
I can see my ribs when I reach back to bite the horseflies.

Last winter a blizzard brought such heavy, wet snow
That your poorly tended roof also sagged;
Fearing collapse Earl moved me out
To pasture, with a shaky little shed for cover.

So these days I wander, nibble the April shoots;
Earl grunts “hey horse” and goes somewhere in his truck most days,
Looks lame.

And I gaze at you, old swayback,
With the Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco paint
Flaking off your south side;
Wondering which of us first
Will hit the ground.

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