Log Trucks

Even with the rain, in a closed up house, I can hear the log trucks coming down Mackletree where they turn unto Upper Twin. They have to brake to a complete stop at the bottom of the hill, a mile away and hundreds of feet below, and then they have to grind upward through their lower gears, to get the fuck out of Dodge. The drivers must hate it. The largest trucks carry two bays of 16 foot logs, eight feet high. I don't want to do the math, but if you figure that it weighs half as much as coal, it's a 50,000 pound mass. Green, wet, oak logs, Jesus; it makes you think about momentum. What I do, if one is coming at me, is pull off the road and come to a complete stop. Going down Route 23 through eastern Kentucky, in the first twenty miles, there's a coal depot on the river, then a coal-fired power plant; they spray down the trucks with water, to keep the dust contained, and the roads are a mess, but energy drives the economy. Someone ask me about the things I don't mention, sex, rock and roll, politics, anything personal, and I was at a loss to describe what I did talk about. Fucking grouse, man, you know what I mean? When the weather gets colder the field mice move back inside and I have to trap them. I can't have them in my larder (a place for storing bacon) and my crow friends have returned. When I start feeding them mice, we know the season has changed. It doesn't so much rain as that the moisture condenses. It looks like rain, and feels like rain, but it's actually just dripping water.