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Solitary Labor
This
winter’s marked a change: no matter
what I do
my hands get cold. I finish my morning
coffee and
grip the still-warm cup, its heat
transfer scant help
for what lies ahead—clearing brush
from a fence row.
When I was a child, Dad warmed my small
hands
between his large ones. “Sure,
work’s plenty,” he’d
say, “but we’ve got all the
time in the world.” Though
Dad never wore gloves, his hands were
always warm.
The good there was in that I never knew
until my
father lay in his coffin, those large,
strong hands of
his no longer warm. I always knew
I’d have to work
alone but never that the day would come
so soon. —After
two decades of college teaching and
bicoastal urban living, W. N. Richardson,
Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, retired his
Ph.D., reclaimed lost rural roots, and
moved to Pennsylvania.
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