Dear Buck Fever

Bright and boldly born, the foal’s shiny
skin is slick when I touch it.
Hope surely dwells in the hollows
of her stick-thin legs, after all
it’s the prop, the pillar that holds
us up too. The drought left us
with one cut of hay last summer,
little to graze, now weedy alfalfa
gets eight dollars a bale
if you can find it.
Most everyone sold out,
and I hear the stockpilers
have taken to sleeping with shotguns
in their barns. Honestly, BF, it’s easier
to rob a bank than to steal hay.
Marietta wanted to take the foal to the lake
but I told her she’d be better off using a gun,
seeing how the lake’s almost gone.

:: Ron Paul Salutsky, in Asheville Poetry Review (15:1, 2008)