Category: Nostalgia
A LONG WAY FROM TOWN
A LONG WAY FROM TOWN
This summer
I will go back to the farm
turn out the yard lights
in the dark of the moon
and look up in four-year-old awe
with a smile
the Milky Way will remember
WHAT YOU MISSED BY NOT GOING TO A ONE ROOM SCHOOL
WHAT YOU MISSED BY NOT GOING
TO A ONE ROOM SCHOOL
Your dad’s initials
jackknifed deep in a desk now yours
The worst teacher in the world
all day every long day for three years
The best teacher in the world
all day every short day for the next one
Watching other kids get the strap
being watched by them when you got it
Beating the big kids in the spelling bee
taking a beating at recess for your trouble
Melting crayons on the tin protector
three feet from the coal stove burn
Home-grown tomatoes sogging
through home-baked bread
Clapping blackboard brushes
upwind of the cough-filled cloud
Green Dust-Bane and a barn broom
pushed across an oiled wood floor
All your enemies, all your friends
no more than twenty feet away
MOONDUST IN THE FOOTPRINTS
MOONDUST IN THE FOOTPRINTS
for Jane on our fiftieth anniversary
Almost fifty years ago
Armstrong landed on the moon
He isn’t there now
but we celebrate it yet
And since
the past is not the past
but in the moment we remember
I remember
you and us
I remember
OFF TO SCHOOL
OFF TO SCHOOL
They sent me off to school today
round-roofed lunchpail packed
with all five stages of grief
Four layer sandwich of
denial
anger
bargaining
and depression
and an apple of acceptance
I don’t think I’ll eat the apple
CHILDREN HAVE
CHILDREN HAVE
Children have a great sense of smell
Maybe that’s why
their diapers make them cry
their first
breast sends them
on a lifelong quest
and a cinnamon bun
can stop us all in the mall
On a farm there’s hay
before it goes into the cow
and hay when it comes out
The pungency of pig, the foul of fowl
Rain before the first drop falls
and the whip of lightning after it cracks
Smoke on dad’s clothes from the prairie fire
snuff from the round box cutting his shirt
The dog, even wet, not diminished in love
If lost in a blizzard, or in the dark
it is always best to let go of the reins
so the horse’s nose can point you home
Lost in the world at four a.m.
twice blessed if yours can do the same
ONCE MORE ROUND THE MAYPOLE
ONCE MORE ROUND THE MAYPOLE
In leisure he revisits
things seen but never noticed in his youth
though they lay but a short arms length away
Cow with ingrown horn
then a saw-wire from repair
now metaphor for defense gone wrong
The deep snow forts of play
two Fahrenheit degrees away
from smother and a crying mother
Frost on a winter window
a forest of trees of finest lace
meant too cold to go outside today
now the music of the spheres in form
Best not to be a poet young
very little would get done
BALL LIGHTNING
BALL LIGHTNING
In the front door out the back
A ball of lightning through the barn
in the story dad would tell
I wonder now if the light was white
and if it made a sizzling sound
as some who’ve seen one have described
All happened in a blink I guess, and gone,
like this, and all the questions that I didn’t ask
LITTLE BROWN JUG
LITTLE BROWN JUG
My father had three sons
and taught them all
how to tie a grain sack, how to cut a calf
how to talk to a horse you walked up behind
so you wouldn’t get kicked or killed
Good things to know
but none of us are working cattle now
He played a mean harmonica
would that he would have taught us that
ROUND TABLES
ROUND TABLES
He loved his neighbors, but not out loud
(Only by default could we tell if he was proud
men did not hug their friends or children then)
There were no women in the bar
and all the tables round and small
heavy with ashtray and pilsner draft
where they talked code till closing time
Politics of any stripe meant you are my brother
The weather, whatever the weather
meant I love you too