Chad Rutter

Nine years old
hunting musk thistles taller than us
on parched Platte River valley bluffs, sliding
the smooth metal curve of a spade
through the roots,
pushing down on the handle
until the muffled pop and the lean, plucking
seed heads Dad would douse
in diesel and burn.
Fetching tools he’d shout for
as he cursed aging implements.
Us if we lagged.
Roguing soybeans,
heaving irrigation pipe.
Watching, quiet, as he whaled a whip
on a cow’s flank, apoplectic.
I think of Heaney’s “Digging,”
but our lesson was dread
when we’d hear his pickup pull into the yard.

Bio

Chad Rutter is an emerging poet originally from rural Nebraska now residing in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He received an MFA from the University of Minnesota in sculpture. His poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, Anti-Heroin Chic, Ballast Journal, Pictura Journal, Novus Literary Arts Journal, The Calendula Review, Dodo Eraser, and Right Hand Pointing.