Electroshock Therapy

Sometimes,
When I start to think of mistakes I have made,
It is difficult to stop feeling bad about myself,
And sadness can overwhelm me.
It takes, sometimes,
A punch in the stomach,
A sudden jolt,
To bring me back from the pit,
Safe from the danger
Of the monster in that abyss.

I touched an electric fence once,
Without knowing how it would feel.
It felt like is been kicked by a horse.
I know this because, later,
I was kicked by a horse, too.
In both cases I learned
To be more careful
Around electric fences
And horses.
Don't stand in their blind spot,
And don't let them stand in yours.
Approach cautiously,
Keep your distance when you don't have to be close,
And by all means,
Don't touch the damn things,
At least not the fences.

I know why that fence shocked me:
It was electrified.
There was a box in grandpa's garage
That pulsed a million volts through the tensile wire,
Supported off the ground by PVC pipes.
The wire went high overhead,
Through the back yard,
And down by the north end of the garden,
And around the pasture where the black-faced steers regarded me cautiously,
Licking their mouths with long, grey tongues,
Blowing snuffs of air through their nostrils.

I touched the fence,
And did again,
Many times.
Though subsequently,
By accident only,
Not ignorance.
I knew the fence was close,
And dangerous,
But I, perhaps,
Walked too carelessly close,
Or was unfamiliar with the length of my growing arms,
Or the conductivity of dewey grass,
Or the strange oscillation
Of three hundred fifty feet of eight gauge wire,
After bumping the PVC post
Ten seconds earlier.

I'm certain my father had cautioned me many times:
Do not touch the wire.
Stand farther off.
Be careful near the pasture.
Back up from the fence.
But I would learn the hard way.
Again, and again.

If you've never felt it,
Or even if you have,
It feels like this:
Someone yanks your arm suddenly,
A hitting and pulling in all directions,
All at once.
You hear it when it happens,
Inside your eardrums,
The throbbing off your heart
Beneath your armpits.
The first time is overwhelming confusion,
And I was lucky to have my dad there to yell at me,
"Get away from the wire!"
He knew better than I why I felt that way.
Subsequently,
I was never confused,
Not by the jolt, at least,
Perhaps by my surprise
That the wire had reached out and grabbed me,
Like a living thing
I thought I had minded my distance.

I am not afraid of an electrified fence.
Nor a horse.
But I mind my distance, now.

At least,
Near the pasture.