My father's hands have been calloused hands
since before the stucco won the sunlight war.

He once walked with twelve-gauge and muddy Labrador
where I now park my car.

& at twilight,
the untamed delta breeze still sings their song
though brustling bulrush
like taut horse hair drawn over nickel,
a tune of a distant fiddle,
close enough to hear but not feel.
My father hums the parts he can remember.
And while he scrapes flakes of grease out from underneath his fingernails with a straightened paperclip he found in the junk drawer in the kitchen,
he surveys his calloused hands,
made to feel the oily wet snap of a mallard's neck,
made for pushing up barbed wire to clear space to step through fences.

He once told me, "pavement's man's best fence,
it's the one that can't be lifted."

And I saw his eyes well up like moonshine—not like the moon shines—
but like a mason jar filled to the brim.