FIRE & FENCES

—t r a b o c c o

The sun drops a ribbon.
Fire.
I ain’t dead.
Glistening.
Sprawling rays.

Heat’s on me...
sin don’t kill easy.
Hell, I'm probably
already resurrected.

One rule: Stay upright.

Don’t flinch.
Don’t waste words.

Action
brings
answers.

Hard work and revelations.

The fence needs building.

No time for washing.
Beard and grit.
Muscle and stone.

Every man breaks once.
Some remain broke.
Some just remain.
Others pick up a hammer;
Start again.

Out here it’s wire & dust,
the hum of my own breath
telling me I’m still breathing.

Neighbor slows the truck,
window down,
gust of dirt follows him in.
I nod once.
Hat tip.
No need for talk.
Men like us only check
to make sure the other one
ain’t gone yet.

Solitary.
Quiet.
Don’t mistake that for pause.
Ain’t nothing more feral
than a wolf
stalking on the regular.

One can miss a lot
when sawing timber.
But I stay —
eyes locked,
teeth in the grain.

Moments and dust.
It’s what I got.
I have joy for this.
I bleed for this.

They used to call me wild.
Reckless.
Cowboy.
Now I just give to the ranch.
My attitude proper.
Do as my father taught me.

“Kindness ain’t something you say, son —
it’s something you do quiet,
when nobody’s lookin’;
same as mendin’ a gate
that ain’t yours.

Father always had a way.
His wisdom was simple.
Real wisdom always is.

"Son, hard men, soft truths.
Passion is molten to a man —
fire that needs calm...
time...
you can’t take it quick.
Earned.
Cooled to soul.

There’s a quiet roar
in the working man’s chest —
sweat as sacrament, son.
Wield muscle into meaning.

You don’t dream it;
you walk it —
nail by nail,
swing that hammer,
bundle that hay...
until your breath slows
to match the pace.

Peace can be likened to a stream, boy...
Sunrise.
Horseback.
Hooves and meaning.
Water over the rock bed.
Sounds of falling leaves,
wings brushing the morning air,
a distant crow calling over the ridge,
the soft creak of leather and saddle,
wind threading through pine needles...
and your life draped
in the mystery...
the breeze."

Father was a poetic man...
Father filled in the moment with words...
Father spoke in steel and truth...

Father was right.

So I work.

Knee to the ground.
Rifle leaned on the fence.
Mountain lion’s known to roam.
Beautiful animal...
But still — just in case.

Hands in dirt,
cedar and oak
posts sunk deep as grief.

Ain’t all peace.
Ain’t all pain.
Just a man working.
The day don’t argue.
A quiet that’s earned its keep.

So content.
But there's always room to grow.

My friend, the Apache...
Lives down by the stream.
What a being.
Simple.
Deep.
So wise.
He reminds me of real things...

"You learn quick that life’s tied to nature —
but it takes the rest of your years to belong.

I never met a man that regretted
a walk by himself in the woods.

God is in all things... true.
He's just easier to spot
on a dirt path than a paved road.

One day you realize
what you seek,
is actually seeking you.

Modern distraction’s are
where resistance starts;
where resistance ends.

Sound ain’t heard; it’s felt.
And in that moment,
you remember the child in you...
where silence breaks open
and remembers its own name.

The greatest illusion among your people
is in the elderly and aging itself.

Your wisest fruit stops growing
at the very moment
it was meant to give back."

He speaks easy —
Coffee, coyotes, and truth...
cleaner than I find in any church.

His sermons are terms I understand:
Sky.
Bark.
Breeze.

I think about him as I
whistle through my day.

Been hummin’ a low sound
since before words found tempo —
a thrum in the belly,
a song in the jaw.
It ain’t music,
it’s memory moving again.

Life’s got a way.
So I keep swingin’.
Keep hummin’.
Keep faith.

Every nail I drive
rings in the same low hymn —
metal and marrow
turning silence into structure,
something that holds because it must;
Laws are so easy here...
choice lost...
after that swing of the hammer.

A break in the day...

The sky don’t just burn —
it breathes, slow and heavy,
like the chest of an old god
who’s seen men build
and break
and build again.

Sun blinks.
Cloud like needed breath.
Shines again.
Same fire that hovers over you...

I’m all in.
Braided in the present.

Back against the fence.
A swig of water.
Taking a moment.

Like a sundial...
Same time each week,
she rolls down the ridge.
Only woman for miles...
A damn good one too.
Dust behind her.
Old Ford idles low.
Radiator sweating.
Jars left on the post —
honey, eggs,
once cornbread, still warm.
Today... a little note under a jar.

"Giving ain’t charity,
it’s just love that don’t need a reason —
quiet, steady, and already on its way before you ask.”

Makes me smile.
Wise, like mama was.
We don’t talk much.
Brief.
That’s the language.

She often looks at me
like she’s already read
what I buried.

Not love.
Return.
Not to her,
to me.

Night folds in.
Broken and used things,
tossed into a pile.

Match off the boot.
Flame leaps.
Smoke climbs,
my signal to the sky.

The fire throws heat
like truth.
Step in close.
Warms me.

Lit up —
eyes alive, chest glowing.
Occasional crackle.
Deep reds. Orange.
Inhale.
Breaths in cadence.
The raw burns with pulse...
a ghost trail.
A whispered draft
through trees.

Then she’s there.
Tree-line.
Can’t hide the reason.
The fire don’t ask.
Highlights intention.

Hunger in her eyes.
Pupils wide.
Scent of want —
more fox than woman.

For a moment,
just us —
heat meeting heat.

She stays until the fire’s
no more than a breath.
The smell of smoke
and sweat between us,
still burning slow.

Motion meets
meaning within.
Rhythm...
working inside.
Who’s who
when you’re in
that deep?

Recognition speaks
better than any language.

She leaves like nature.
Gone like rain.
Shadow.
Ash.

Morning comes.
Sounds of life.
Another day.
I step through.

Grab the hammer.
Back to work.

Cow in the wire.
Happens out here.
Nature’ll test your rules,
same way time tests a post.

You can brace it, patch it,
but oak don’t care
who set the line.

Is what it is.

The young man in me —
he used to curse that truth.
Thought every break meant failure.
That tone might be familiar to you...
Fought everything that bent,
every sign that said stop.
But the man…
the man learned.
It’s all part of it.
Even the wrecks
have a pattern.

There’s irony in every hoofprint.
Step forward and I fill the man’s boots.
Sit back, and the man’s a haze —
a ghost with calloused hands
and nothing left to prove.

My rules got holes.
So do clouds.
You can squeeze one,
get a little rain —
long as you know
it ain’t yours to keep.

I smell like cattle,
leather,
intensity,
and something
that remembers
how it was forged...

Untangle that cow.
Glove off.
Run my hand over that hard, square head,
the locks of brown hair,
the big soft belly.

I love the animal —
but I don’t lose sight
of the picture
for the paint.

Reminds me...
It's not all
guns and hammers.

Some flowers have thorns.
Beauty’s its own warning —

Mama taught me that early.
She was a good woman.
Had lessons too...

“Wind don’t care who set the fire.”
“God judges character, not beliefs.”

And her favorite line, god bless her...
“Check a woman’s fingernails, son —
dirt tells more truth
than polish ever could.”

It’s odd…
I see the world as
she would at times...
and I wonder
if that’s God’s hand
on my shoulder,
or Mama’s lessons
coming through.

She always had me thinking,
that a working man
was the thing to be.

I guess there's plenty of wisdom
in a women
raised wearing denim.

Life’s difficult.
She’s with the wind now.
Is what it is.

Anyway...
a little blood from that wire—
proof I’m still here.

Scars are just
memories we trace
when we need to brace
for another cut.

And pain... well, pain’s just part of it.
Same as regret — you can dwell,
or keep working,
live with what you’ve done,
or you can get on with it
the only way you know how.

Sometimes I look around,
give myself a moment,
take it all in...

I was never a man
to have much questioning
of my thoughts.
But occasionally I do wonder
what’s been made of me...
Not the cowboy I once pictured,
but a real one.

Dust, mountains, cattle, wind —
the kind that don’t ask for much,
just presence.

And I wonder...
if the boy I was
had known
what a man truly is...
maybe he’d have dreamed of becoming this one.

Hard work is its own religion.
Wind don’t pray —
just passes through with God in the gust.

In the fence line,
the horses, the hammer, the heat;
my faith’s in the rhythm.

I don't know how you get by...
But work’s the only peace
I ever keep.

I’m not loud.
Don’t have to be.

I’ve been around long enough to know —
Work without pride’s a body without soul.
Do it as confession —
and you’ll be
the hammer,
the nail,
the echo...

Don’t take a word from a man
who ain’t lived that truth himself.

Back to hummin.
Inside the frame.
Work to do.

This ain’t swagger.
It’s real.
Lived-in.
What I was taught.
What I became.

Metal and bone.