Listening To Grandpa, Again
As we walk a path,
once a road,
leaving tracks between
the puncture vines,
his gaze runs along
a fallen fence, past
where Deacon Hayes or
John Coble is resting,
and cuts across
a field harvested forty
seven times, before
passing through
regrown oaks
and crossing the creek
to find a buckshot
wounded windmill
forever trading rhetoric
with the wind.
Originally Published in
Touchstone, 1983, Fall/Winter
Lunch Time, At Walnut Creek Cemetery
3 miles South, 3˝
West, of Glen Elder, KS
September 6, 1978—7:30 p.m.
We have lunched here for years. A tradition
chiseled from a landmark of bereavement,
an occurrence fixed by circumstance
and coincidence that we farm just across
the road. Today, we are doing it again.
When mother arrives with the food,
she stops by the gate. My brother and I park
our tractors, stretch our backs, and slap
the dust from our hands. Dad and grandpa
join us. Blankets unfurl like parachutes
and sink into the shade of evergreen trees.
We arrange ourselves onto the ground.
Then, just before the first bite of sandwich
or drink of iced-tea or lemonade, mother
does the proper thing and invites the dead
to join us. We discuss her offer and joke
that others might find this odd. We don’t care;
this place is comfortable, like a storage room
in an out-of-the-way part of the house
where we choose to open a window.
Fresh air accompanies a music of blue sky,
wind, buffalo grass and weeds —
and a few short rows of tombstones,
shelves lined with preserved points of time.
After lunch, we walk where the deceased
once walked, where neighbor ushered neighbor,
farmer after farmer, into the ground. December 23,
1872—baby daughter. January 16, 1873—son,
(same family). August 11, 1891—dearest
mother. May 3, 1884—loving wife. March 20,
1880—kind father. September 6, 1878—husband.
Infants, children, parents, grandparents.
Lifetimes weathered into ghosts
of assumption, their deaths a mystery.
Scarlet fever? Pneumonia? Diphtheria?
Influenza? Childbirth? The list lingers
with tragedy. Unearthed, a mirage
of settlers idle around us—pioneers
consumed by a timeless circulation of crops,
plowed fields, and harvests that flow
around these boundaries. After awhile,
we all go back to work. From a distance,
I continue to notice the dead. Like long lost
friends, they meander and converse comfortably,
existing on our hospitality, happy
for a momentary taste of resurrection
Seasoning
Fall blew under the porch
late, and it was mid-November
before elm leaves chatting
in the front yard chased
themselves into that place
where only the dog ventured.
In the garden, bony tomato
and cucumber vines posed
limp. Stiff stems still clung
to apples too mushy to throw.
The flies had vanished.
Cows brought in, turned out
to milo stubs, licked up dry-sweet
stalks and juicy heads missed
by anxious combines. Each morning
we stretched last year's cramps
from worn coats, and exercised
new gloves on bucket handles;
sows bumped from beds furrowed
in straw. Spiced, fully cooked
and cooling, the air cured
into winter.
Originally Published in
Negative Capability, 1987, V.7, N.3
Thursday, Nov. 28th 1:07 a.m.
One light is on
above the kitchen sink.
Tomorrow's dinner plates
are clean,
stacked next to a bowl
of white, unpeeled
potatoes. Pumpkin pies
settle on the stove.
Chairs sit politely
around the table. Each
individual tick
of the clock
falls off the wall,
out of tune
with the hum
that comes from beneath
the refrigerator.
Everyone else is asleep.
I cut a piece of pie.
Then another.
Originally Published in
Cottonwood, 1986, N.40
|
A Brave Farmer Goes To The Bank
~ farmer -- /'farm r/n 1: a person
who pays a fixed sum for some privilege
or source of income 2: a person who cultivates land
or crops or raises livestock 3: YOKEL, Bumpkin ---
Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary
1981
He parks right out front
where his neighbor's mud
has hardened
onto the asphalt,
and walks
straight to the bank's thick glass
door. The door is placed
to reflect everyone's image,
and the farmer sees his T-shirt
is untucked. The door is easy
to open. It shouldn't matter.
The banker is his friend,
and behind a plowshare-styled smile
that can't break crust,
he welcomes the farmer
with interest. They both fake it.
A mystic, the banker pulls
his pile of paper, from somewhere,
and begins to read the future.
The farmer is afraid,
and imagines himself swallowed
by the chair that holds him.
He is paying for his life
with his life. He leaves
the building with the mystic's fee
printed on pink, and feels the stiffness
of the concrete
move into his knees,
proving that he is not ageless.
Originally Published in
Kansas Quarterly, 1993, V.24, N.4
Americas Review, 1999, N.10
Back to Top
A Determined Farmer And His Family
Load The Last Heifer
--November--
Tail-twisting to the far side
of the pasture the last heifer
never looks back.
The loading chute empties.
The farmer's son claims
no fault, spins his Yamaha
ready for a 2-wheeled rodeo.
His mother, her hair half-tangled
with patience, her boots
lathered with shit, shouts
toward the heifer, gives her men
a ripped-shirt speech
of compassion
because it's part of her
job. The farmer swears,
and because he is not a cowboy
rides his horse however he can,
CO-OP cap on backwards.
Together, the farmer
and his son chase the beast
along a mile of fence,
uphill, down
hill, across a pond dam,
places no cow has ever
been before.
Aware of space, the farmer's son
twists the throttle
deep through his hand. Aware
of what's between
his legs
the farmer holds on
for his life. The horse,
bored with the luggage
on its back, enjoys it all
because he has sense,
does everything
but shut the gate
to a second-wind kink
in a cow's tail that spins
the last heifer back
to the further side of its world.
Originally Published in
Kansas Quarterly, 1993, V.24, N.4
Back to Top
The Purging Of A Gobbler
He'd been Old Tom, forever,
squat and fat,
a gloating, strutting ball
of self-conceit
that dared a brighter world
to cross a path
he'd paved with constant garbled gab
and flap, a collage of nothing
spewing from his throat,
his feathers falling, tattered,
from a cushion growing old,
fluff spread across the yard.
A scrooge that found us throwing slang,
and rocks and cans
in his direction,
to only have him turn
and chase us, bounding
through the grass
balloon style on a breeze
intent upon attack.
Not to say, but one day
someone slapped him upside the head,
grabbed his legs, drug him off,
hung him by his feet
from a limb to twist and twirl.
A dangling gunny sack of lard
finally silent with surprise.
Again, someone grabbed
his long and greying beard,
yanked, stretched his neck
and played a tune of taps
across his throat
with a rusty blade pocketknife.
And in a final burst of glory
his blood soaked us all,
marble agates never blinking
as the mindless mind
hit the ground.
Originally Published in
Touchstone, 1983, Fall/Winter |
