Remnants

Abstract

Remnants Rufus A. Skeens (bio) A cold front settles in knee and shoulder— not the sharp-new-injury pain that ebbs and throbs knife-like with the heart—rather an ache similar to the snow’s pressure that swags the barn’s roof under January’s heft. Arthritis— litmus test for every youthful indiscretion. You should always warm your hands before palming the Holstein’s udders—thus the bum knee. There’s no prize money riding the trick mule at the ’39 Dickenson County Fair, only an un-separated shoulder and an off-set left collarbone. These pains slowly break in like work boots you wear every day. Sixty-seven years, and you wake to find you are the only one breathing in a bedroom that sleeps two. The cow’s low calls you to hustle the pail; hens cackling atop a golf ball and an egg or two demand routine—while everything stirs around you but nothing in the world moves, waiting on someone official to brave icy roads. You can’t stretch your mouth around this pain to define intensity. Rather, a hedgerow Nazi’s round in the chest slams you to a crawl. This sudden wound stamps a harsh period on today’s sentence, black as that single crow who’s working snow in the cow’s lot for remnants of yesterday’s cracked corn. [End Page 53] Rufus A. Skeens Rufus A. Skeens is a retired coal miner who was raised in Grundy, Virginia, and now lives in Bristol. He has been published in several regional magazines. Copyright © 2009 Berea College