Shadows Cast

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Everything riots for its spot in the sun, though the spot be a filtered, shadowed reflection. I recognize the plants that are armed against me with surreptitious schemes to make my skin bristle and itch. In the past, they have kept me out. Now, with a bit of care I can avoid them, though I watch for snakes and for spiders in what's left of my hair, and enter the place where a man spent long days building his farm, first adding a small silo until he could build up his herd. He had chickens too, and horses.  He saved his pennies, lived modestly in the small farmhouse where he burned wood through the winter to keep his family warm.  Whether saint or scoundrel, inside the barn he has left not a trace of who he was or of his daily routine except for the double line of rusting, milking stalls where the roof is collapsing under the weight of vines. Behind them, in a field now planted with drying soy, his cows grazed until milking time, and when he was done with his chores he went home to rest.