National Poetry Month
Poem of the Week
April 26, 2004
In our eyes a workhorse wind
blurs the winter sun, makes the far
slope one mousey spillway of weeds.
The ashen growth curls thin
as whittlings underfoot. What'll we plant?
Talking up crops we pay no mind
to the loud air of Stapleton Field
or the unraveled atmosphere
heavy with brief machines. Like good
movie extras we're lost in our parts
behind clodhopper Bible names
and high rawbone cheeks. Calling out
to Rebecca, Abel, Ephraim,
Zebadiah, we let our Adam's apples bob.
But inside? What'll we do
about wall dirt crumbling off sod
stacked up like a closed book?
We hold it with whitewash we've learnt
to stroke broom-thick. We ignore
3 fighter jets fresh up
from their Buckley strip, hustling
the horizon lean level and fast.
We've grown steady as this weather
riding the land, and barely flinch
at hearing the sky get blown
in half. How lumber's skimpy!
We'll have to wagon-haul
each plank two weeks
from the mountains west. Without bushes
or trees we find ourselves stooped
to gathering buffalo dung
that'll heat and bake.
Before driving away
we cramp into a final hut, go through
scarlet fever, childbirth in a mud box.
On the turnpike we can't get over
how recently life out here
was like that, and worse. And how
gain means loss. And how
none of it is us.
--Reg Saner
Reprinted from Climbing Into the Roots by Reg Saner.
Harper & Row, New York, 1976. Copyright (c) 1976
by Reg Saner. Used with the author's permission.