Limestone 9 Consulting
  • Home
    • Payments
    • Site Map
  • About
  • Websites
    • Website Development
    • Our Clients
    • Domains & Hosting
    • Website Tools
  • Visuals
  • Special Projects
  • Limestone9.com
    • Poetry >
      • Summer
      • Harvest
      • Fall
      • Winter
      • Spring
      • Limestone Cowboy
      • As A
    • Essays >
      • Far Away Places
      • Turning Into Mother
      • Beyond Confessional
      • Last Rights
  • Home
    • Payments
    • Site Map
  • About
  • Websites
    • Website Development
    • Our Clients
    • Domains & Hosting
    • Website Tools
  • Visuals
  • Special Projects
  • Limestone9.com
    • Poetry >
      • Summer
      • Harvest
      • Fall
      • Winter
      • Spring
      • Limestone Cowboy
      • As A
    • Essays >
      • Far Away Places
      • Turning Into Mother
      • Beyond Confessional
      • Last Rights
Picture
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
Select poems from The Last Day of Harvest
  • Summer  |  Harvest  |  Fall  |  Winter  | Spring
Other Series
  • The Limestone Cowboy  |  As A...

Winter Selections
​

One Morning While Taking Straw From The Barn
 
During the night, snow
has crawled through a crack
in the barn and curled itself
into a small drift
the shape of a white cat
sleeping on straw.
It rests, content as a feather,
on the first bale to be chucked
out the hayloft door.
The drift, I decide,
is a challenge
to the order of things
in the barn.
And I work for it ---
pry the second choice
from the stack like a brick
taken from the middle
of a wall.  And the next,
and the next, each bale
removed out of its intended
order until, when my back
is turned, a floater
lets go at the top
and slides like ice
headfirst into the cat's bed.
Parts of winter
soak through the air,
settle with last summer's
hot dust turned cold,
and I
chuck another bale.
 
Originally Published in Permafrost, 1987, V.9, #1
Tuesday Morning Hog Sale
                                 --Lot 27--   
In the ring, hogs.
 
A one time parade.
Some more beautiful
than others.  A display
of  the latest  loins
 
and hams revolving
to the snap
of a herder's whip. 
The auctioneer,
 
his voice chiming
through the sour
kraut smell
of animal fear,
 
catches
moody silent bids
—the lax-wrist
twist of a dangled
 
cigarette, a twitched
ear, an off-eye
glance—cast
by jury-faced buyers,
 
animals themselves,
their butts anchored
to the denim-buffed
bleachers, waiting
 
for the paperwork

A Farmer's Son, Age 25, Gives Up And Moves To The City,
or The Implications of Liquidating A Farm Operation

 
The only thing that stays is the dog.
The microwave and T.V. go in the backseat,
most of the clothes piled
on top of that; a potted plant
on the floorboard, and a lamp.  Suitcases
and scattered toys in the trunk.  Stuff
Chapter 7 dictates personal.
The kid goes in the middle, the wife
behind the wheel.  The farmer's son
drives the pick-up loaded with more stuff.
Tables.  Chairs.  The couch.  The bed.
Generations of dried sweat dust
from dirt roads.  When the farmer's son
turns onto the highway he follows
the yellow lines.  He looks back,
but not over his shoulder.  This time
he imagines running head-on
into the banker and they both die.
He thinks about this, and doesn't give a damn.
Waylon, Willy, and a bunch of other boys
get-down in the radio and keep him company.
About noon some guy with a well-behaved voice
comes on.  Barrows and gilts
are steady to 50 higher in Omaha.
December wheat, five-and-a-half lower.
The farmer's son bends the man's words
between the numbers, finds some FM, Rock
and Roll.  And he don't listen to country music
anymore
 
Originally Published in Kansas Quarterly, 1990, V.22, N.3
Tumbleweed
 
A dry comet
shooting across
the deep space
of green wheat
fields frostbitten
with winter
you pass by
quick, bullet
weightless,
going south, just
ahead of the wind,
sure of your aim,
never looking back
as you leap
the ditch, and cross
the road, stumbling
into next year’s fallow,
insane with speed,
jump-roping
past jackrabbits
stopped
to watch,
their  ears bent
twixt,  startled,
as you scream
away
 
Originally Published in Potpourri, 1998, V.10, N.4

Coyote
 
There you are.
emerged
from nowhere.
Like an old man's
memory.  Inspired
by an urge. 
A rumor on its way
across January. 
Balanced
on the tight-rope
of a hill's
horizon. 
Paw after paw,
you check
behind you
for your future.
Leery
of your next
step, 
suspicious
of your last. 
Invisible
when I look again.
Maybe you were there. 
Maybe not.

Originally published in Seedhouse, 2001, V. 3, #6        

Select poems from The Last Day of Harvest
  • Summer  |  Harvest  |  Fall  |  Winter  | Spring
Other Series
  • The Limestone Cowboy  |  As A...
Greg German
Kansas City, Kansas
E-mail Us  |  913.486.7522
Pay with Credit card, PayPal or Venmo.
Click To Make A Payment
Blue line Swirl image
Limestone 9 logo image
Instagram - Click to View
Facebook - Click to View