Wheelbarrow Farm

When hell freezes over, he swears by three things.

Lard on the lips. Two pairs of socks. His wheelbarrow,

good on the steep when even the Ford won’t grip.

This morning he opens the door to a clean sweep

right up to the dairy’s cracked slate step, frost

spangling the tank and, briefly, he’s ten years old

but now it’s taking the piss. Grunt glares at the snow

and it glares back. He kicks the water trough,

heels a hole through the ice. First floods, now this,

the daily round, in arctic sludge. Milk substitute

for the calves, a brick of pellets for the fowls.

He rolls out a silage bale in the cubicle house

and forks it to the cows, sets a can at the yard tap

drumming up chilly water for the dogs,

for the lambs in the barn, the fifty hogs on the hill.

A neighbour phones on the scrounge for a box

and a tow out of the ditch where he spent the night.

Grunt goes off to do what he does best –

apply excess force with a tool. He’s back at noon

to fix a burst pipe, by which time two sheep

haven’t moved for an hour, are past fixing.

Snow starts to fall as he toils up the slope,

hauls one sheep into the wheelbarrow,

picks his way down, then moils up again.