SILO SOLO

My father climbs into the silo.

He has come, rung by rung,

up the wooden scar that scales

that tall belly of cement.

It’s winter, twenty below zero,

and he can hear the wind overhead.

The silage beneath his boots

is so frozen it has no smell.

My father takes up a pick-ax

and chops away a layer of silage.

He works neatly, counter-clockwise

under a yellow light,

then lifts the chunks with a pitchfork

and throws them down the chute. 

They break as they fall

and rattle far below.

His breath comes out in clouds,

his fingers begin to ache, but

he skins off another layer

where the frost is forming

and begins singing, “You are my

sunshine, my only sunshine.”

Joyce Sutphen grew up on a small farm in Stearns County Minnesota.  Currently, she teaches literature and creative writing at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota.