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The Pigs
A humid day,
mosquito clouds swarm along
a red dirt road to the farm.
There are grimy rows of pig pens,
hazed dark by humming hordes
of black fly.
Bob (an old friend), chuckles.
“Man, you picked the wrong time of year
to come visit.”
The hogs grunt and squeal.
He waves,
“be with you soon.”
It’s slop-time - the air is turgid
with the many notes of a stale miasma,
everywhere there is the splatter
of slime and muck.
He carries smeared green buckets;
a deleterious, partly consumed gunk
that reeks of that semi-solid swill
hogs grow fat upon.
On the low walls
there are slick stains, layers of grime;
a smeared feculence
corrugated into noxious layers.
Even behind the stalls
there are a heaps
of sludge and slurry.
Bob flushes surfaces down
with his long hosepipe.
He bends to his tasks whistling happily
while I explain to my new wife
that he used to work for the C.I.A.
I can see she’s surprised,
maybe impressed.
Long pause…
watching Bob wade knee deep
into his labor of love.
“Yea”, I sighed,
“he got real tired of all that."
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an edit
Copyright ©
Eric Ashford
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