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Limestone9.com
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 |
Summer Selections
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Leaving Home At Age Three
Twisted and pushed by a breeze climbed down from its tree, the tire-swing plays aimlessly alone. The barn watches, wanting to move, its black hole windows sinking deeper into its face. For no reason the backyard fence remains on duty. The house does not call me back. I leave behind everything for grandpa's old place, walk either side the weeds grown down the middle of the lane, follow the creek where summer's shade outlines the edge of a field buttered with ripening wheat. Grasshoppers snap and buzz from firebush to sunflower, sometimes bounce across my path. They are mine, if I want them, just as the green hill across the field might be. A quarter-mile must be a long way. I make it to the walnut tree that stands on the last bend and rest there inside its shadow. I can see the empty buildings. Satisfied, I collect the best walnuts, stack them, throw them at anything, unconcerned that no one knows I am gone. Originally Published in Permafrost, 1987, V.9, #1 |
The Farmer’s Wife
She is the adult child of the first mother —the spirit that opens the back door, rocks the porch swing, washes the bedding, sweeps the floor, wipes clean dishes dry. She is the dog’s second best friend, the cat’s first, and the bucket calf’s reason for head-butting play tomorrow. She is the feeder, the killer, the fryer of chickens. A traveler of empty roads she is the floating dust of shortcuts between field, town, and home—the first gear’s shift between machine broken parts and repair, the extra hand. She is the attendant of forgotten chores, flat tires, lost patience, and young sons’ wet splattered aims fallen dirty feet short. She is the admirer of yesterday’s litters, and tonight’s comforter of the sow’s hard, late labor. Hands callused, she is a mender of hurts, a carrier of grain, and the feeder of dirty men. She is never tired and never old. She is like weather. On any day’s certain hour she holds her husband’s entire world in her bare hands. Originally Published in The Midwest Quarterly, 2007, V. 48, #4 |
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A Farmer's Son, Age 11, Plows 6 Acres
4 p.m. Blunt as horse's breath, heat, boiler room hot laced with diesel smoke, wraps off the tractor's engine and hones the child from his face. Dust, settled onto his bare back, is squeezed into his shoulders by a fat-bellied sun. Tasteless now, the water warm, his jug half empty, everything is against him; rain clouds are nowhere. The land evolves into a battlefield, the plow a dictator. Each shrunken round becomes larger than the last; each minute is an hour. Red-tail hawks, kites suspended in the wind, rotate across a prairie-sized sky. Introduced to endless, the farmer's son is angry, sacrificed by his father, taken by the land. Originally Published in WIND, 1998, Fall #81/82 |
8 Neighbors And 27 Hundred Bales
"Heat-alert, caution, stay indoors, avoid stress, and drink plenty of cool liquids." --KSAL Radio, Salina, KS An hour into night the day's heat is finely wrapped with darkness, the last bale packed tight before our sweat dries from its brown twine ribbon. The whole stack's a package, and we glance at it, over dirt piled shoulders, while shaking the chaff in our underwear down into our salt-cured jeans. At home the porch light invites us in. We make it only as far as the front yard, sit there on overturned buckets or lean sun-stained backs on the grass. The dog takes his turn at our curious scents. Beer tastes the way beer should, and even though chores and supper wait, we laugh again at the afternoon radio's scratched record warning . . . "Heat-alert, caution, stay indoors, avoid stress, and drink plenty of cool liquids." Originally Published in Permafrost, 1987, V.9, #1 |
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Just Before The Dry Spell Ends
"I never seen a dry spell yet that didn't end with a good rain." Grandpa German It comes sizzling in. The first touch of rain. Spit, it seems, from a far place. A dark place. And stings deep into days of hot country road dust. A sharp little thing extinguished quick as the stroke of a dragonfly's wing. Yet, it forces up dust, this place giving up dust, much the same way the man-in-the-moon was dented when he was a child. Then everything is wet. Originally Published in Mid-America Review, 2000, Fall, V.1, N.2 |
Late Edition Forecast
It is darker than it should be at night. The crickets are nervous. They don't talk. The dog waits under the porch, and the cats can't decide where to go. Standing in the stubble field north of the house I see light escape from an open window. It runs to a tree out back, then hangs limply with the leaves. Cathedral silence fumbles in the air anxious for a place to pause. The cloud is there, somewhere, defining itself on restless winds sinking roots deeper into the fusing blackness. Soon, I will have to go home. Originally Published in Alaska Quarterly, 1988, V.6, N.3 |
