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Poetry from The Last Day of Harvest, by Greg German
Kansas farm & rural themed poetry and personal essays.
All writing, poetry & essays in this website - Copyright © by Greg German, 2019 |
Fall Selections
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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 |
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 |
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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 and in Americas Review, 1999, N.10 |
A Determined Farmer And His Family
Load The Last Heifer 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 |
Lunch Time, At Walnut Creek Cemetery
3 miles South, 3½ 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
Originally Published in Begin Again, A Kansas Anthology, 2011
3 miles South, 3½ 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
Originally Published in Begin Again, A Kansas Anthology, 2011
