Bravery

A rung’s come broken in the ladder to the mow and so one hesitates to clamber up there just to bomb a cow with dung or bother swallows from their rafter cakes. It takes a new footing some- where in the ribs’ treads, about heart- height, to climb it now. A new gap’s in the smile that smiles from the limed barn floor. There seems to come a break in the war. But soon, one of a neighbor’s sons, too young to know it was otherwise once, braves it, and soon, even with a sweater- swaddled kitten or a BB gun, all the kids can do it again, nearly at a run, like pros, and so it goes, as before.