Foggy

I don’t remember a winter when it has been this foggy. Of course, with my memory, that isn’t saying much. But it just seems like day after day we are foggy and have hoar frost. Lost electricity yesterday for several hours, I suppose because of the frost falling off the lines and snapping back to touch each other, thereby blowing a fuse or breaker or whatever they have on the lines. And our provider is 70 miles away at Bison. So it’s a long drive for them guys to have to come down and kick a breaker on. You’d think we’d have someone stationed down closer, but for some reason we don’t.

Any way, because of the fog and feeding in it with the team this morning, it made me think of this poem I wrote years ago, on a morning like this. Very similar. This is probably one of my favorite poems I have ever written. I didn’t mean it to be funny, but when I recite it most folks laff at the last line.

Comprehension

Like ghosts they materialize
Appearing through the fog to get their feed
Shuffling so carefully, over the ice
Conditions dictate their speed

With shaggy, unkempt hair
Hip joints jutting from rail thin back
Swinging, swaying, udders look like
Old gloves hanging from a rack

Steam swirls up from their nostrils
Only to vanish in the clinging mist
They drop their heads down to reach the feed
This is our daily tryst

I wonder if they think I’m a god
I provide for them from their birth to the grave
Then I’m hit with sudden, awestruck realization
To them, I’m merely a slave