Sisyphus by Boyd Bauman

It’s a rocky ol’ farm

he’d say

as he donned his pinstriped

Oshkosh overalls,

mounted the Massey Ferguson

for the north forty

to fill the scoop

with a new crop of stone.

He never went to college

never met Camus

but he knew the Sisyphean task,

the retracing of steps

to the valley

of the family farm

where his father had beaten

the fear of man into him,

instructed him

to repair the barn’s tin apex,

the summit of a broken windmill

within this existential framework:

If you fall,

we won’t lose much.

He put his shoulder to

the raising of new life

out of the same scarred soil,

the raising of five children

without the raising

of a harmful hand.

This man who never offended

any god’s sensibilities

knew the hill

from crest of terrace

to nadir,

knew the rock

as it surfaced anew

in the plow blade’s wake:

the boulder broken

the boulder whole.

~ Boyd Bauman

Boyd Bauman grew up on a small ranch south of the town of Bern, Kansas and is currently a teacher and writer in Roeland Park, Kansas.  Boyd lives with his lovely wife Lisa and their little poets Haven and Milly.