Livestock Auction

My uncle, youngest of five, took on the farm.
The only boy. The only thing to do.
We’d go down in late August. He’d spin us yarns:

tall tales of all the trouble we were due
while stopping in. Callow, not knowing birds,
or the land, like he did; and trusting — all we knew

of cunning country ways came from his words.
He took us to the mart. Ego on id.
Staid old men nodding at the auctioned herds.

I swung from railings. Enough to make a bid:
he told me, smiling, that I’d bought a lamb.
I never saw it. I’m still not sure I did.

When I think of him, I think of being a man.
Craft buried in humour. He wore the weight
of it lightly. And I think of who I am —

long limbs swinging from an old farmyard gate.