Ode to an Old Cart

One wheel
is all that’s left now,
a twelve-pinned family of wood
around an empty iron heart,
thick spokes,

silenced,

by an axle resting among other
retired machinery bits, no cart
to spin the yarn of a lane
into wood that

rotated
the
potatoes

home.

I remember
that clear October night
when the window at my bed held
a moment of the horse cart on its heels

amid the open drills of turnips, two arms
reaching into a star-studded sky that held
wishes for the quiet yearnings of
laboured things; I prayed for

the horse,
his yoke
and their bond

inside the paternity of my father’s hands.

And how I recall
the tomfoolery of the man
who donned the collar and drew cart and children
around the garden; huge arms filled with

shafts
still
warm

from the sides of a heavy-boned
trot and the sound of laughter.

But
wheel and memories
were laid to rest,
many a year before he,

the grasses holding it
in a slanted embrace to
the crumbling of a barn wall,
worn-out friends interred in dappled sunlight.