A team of oxen was hauling a wagon along a rutted, muddy track. They toiled in weary silence, while behind them, at every bump, the wooden axle creaked and rasped and groaned. Eventually, they grew tired of hearing the axle’s complaints.

“You, back there, enough of your moaning,” the oxen called. “It is we who sweat and strain, we who drag this load onward, not you, yet do you hear us grumble? Why then must we listen to you?”

“Friends, I did not ask to be here,” the axle replied. “I was cut down, severed from my roots, stripped of my branches, reduced from leafy splendour to be a part of this mud-spattered undercarriage. That is why I lament. I long for my home and the life I once had.”

The oxen stopped in the middle of the lane. They’d been so occupied by their own exertions they had never imagined others enduring greater hardship, and they were shocked to hear it. But the crack of the driver’s whip reminded them of their burden and they set off once more.

Again at every bump, the axle creaked and rasped and groaned, but the oxen now felt moved by the lament. They began to bellow, long and loud, for their sorrows and for those of their friend. And though the driver cursed and swore and lashed their hides, he could not silence them.

© Richard Parkin 2021