Inspired by Family Farm by Carolyn Lindsey
Barbara Sparks
Lives in the Balance Dust swirls across the dirt compound and decaying adobe buildings of the family farm. Joe’s horses amble the parched yard. The morning sun heats up this southwest border town. You sure this is all right to be walking through Joe’s farm? She asked. Oh yeah, Joe doesn’t mind. How else we going to get where we’re going. Ed, a Nogales resident, replied. We walked past the horse corral, odd pieces of discarded equipment, a rusted car. A handful of cattle corralled in a dirt lot looked forlorn and forgotten. As we passed the wire fenced lot a white cow, with what looked like a black shawl over her shoulders, dropped a calf. Spellbound, we halted, grew silent; we watched the beginning of a life. Oh, wow! I’ve never seen a birth out in a feed lot like this. She exclaimed. I’m afraid those cows don’t get much attention. They always look so destitute. That cow did a good job. Faith, Ed’s wife, said. The newborn, all spindly legged, struggled to get a footing. She flopped from one side to another, each leg independent, uncoordinated until synchronized into a pattern of stability to 32 | EKPHRASIS 2022
hoist herself up. She latched on to her lifeline of support, gulping deeply with each swallow. She will survive, it’s time to move on. Our group crosses the yard into a rambling grove of mesquite and juniper sidestepping rocks, cowpies, ruts of standing water, plastic water bottles. A two-track headed out through the farmland into open fields of rocks and catclaw. Ed and Faith lead us through the farm to a view of the fence that divides the border towns of Nogales, in Arizona and Nogales, Sonora in Mexico. An abandoned backpack lies under a juniper, further along a used baby diaper and filthy blanket tossed off the road. More plastic water bottles. People shed what they no longer need or can carry. Chatter about the newborn calf halted. In the distance we begin to see what we came to see. An undulating brown steel fence flows like a gigantic snake through the hills to the horizon. Its massive shadow spreads across the dirt road running parallel to the border fence. The shocking presence it has, like a wound exposed, bled dry; its hardness, its massiveness, 20-foot-plus-hight intruding on the landscape. A double row of rolled razor wire secured to the top of the entire fence line. This area is marked E15.
