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Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada. His book, The Downstairs Dance Floor (Texas Review Press, 2006), was awarded the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize. His latest project involves “Walking with Elihu” which is about the American peace activist Elihu Burritt, the Learned Blacksmith (1810-1879).
Diagnosis
Never complained about anything –
not hardpan soil that balked at hoe
and shovel, or how the first freeze
came earlier each year, and snow
stayed longer, before it turned to mud
that rutted in the roads; each spring
a little shorter, it seemed. Never
complained about any of it.
When the doctor told him, his face
sagged like that portrait on the wall.
Then he went back home and gripped
his axe a little harder.