Heaven

My grandfather wore a sweat stained fedora, a red feather from a bantam rooster in the band, and the mule he commanded seemed not so much attached to the plow as arrayed in leather and hemp, intersecting rings, halter, belly band, and blinder, and nebular swarms of sweat bee, horse fly, bottle fly, and gnats like live particles of penance he hosted for the curse of being a mule. My grandfather believed work was the surest way to navigate time, and time, though high and mighty any given day, though flashed out in sun or expensive as rain, all came down to the dirt in the end, and you plowed time, or your part of time, and planted and prayed, but not with words you’d hear in church, and no more to God than the mule prayed to God, and no more toward heaven than the end of the row— grain in the bucket, cold water from the well.