30-odd feet at a time
John’s ancestor stretched out his surveyor’s chain
and measured the land
from the already tired eastern edge of Indiana
to the sunburned
western brow of Nebraska, peering across the prairie
toward the peaceful Pacific
that must be there, and then as though returning
to a passage in a book
that demanded to be re-read for its simplicity, its elegance –
he came back
to the tree-pocked hills puckered around Whippoorwill Creek,
and stayed.
[Everything depends on]
I cannot tell his story but
John too carried himself west, measuring out cups of brown sugar,
measuring broth,
meting out the length of himself until he too was out of chain
and heard
the creek sing to itself through the hills.
This is not my story, I
wander in late, tangential, watch as friends cross 30 years
and five states tell stories, the stories I didn’t know:
about the tear gas in the hallway and
the one about the Scot getting on the midnight train
to escape the American girlfriend,
the bread rolls in Germany that weren’t free;
and the stories I was there for:
the broken-down car and breaching the cemetery gate,
Nessie breaking the surface of the Loch.
Meanwhile the earth
is sliding out of its orbit, too drunk to find its way home,
beset by one malady after another:
cooler Australian Murray Greys
slowly swapping out the hot black Angus in the pastures,
not enough snow to plow,
the Asian Longhorned tick, tiny vampires from the east
on a slow but steady march
one inch, one carcass at a time – all of this on top of the usual:
too much rain, too little rain,
muskrats clogging up the pipe in the pond,
a thorn in the paw
of the dog that rounds up the cattle,
a gallon of diesel
as much as a bottle of craft beer,
broken contracts,
broken hearts, lives coming to a slow close,
boundaries crossed and redrawn.
[But everything depends on]
This life, I love you, but you’re bringing me down.
And yet
and though,
civil war is up on one elbow in the tent, listening…
although there is no turning sufficient
to bring the earth back to orbit,
though we are but the walking dead –
Lucky the duck
laughs us awake in the October morning chill,
late sunrise blushes pink
on the weathered chicken coop,
the wind creeps
through the open window, lifting the curtain
to check whether we are awake –
there is new pasture for the bulls, a calf born and gamboling, and
Red will be ever kept
in the pasture for her goodness. There are
watermelon rinds
for the goats, oxtail bones for the dogs –
we shape
apple turnovers into the night, roll and flour and cut and stuff and crimp
new stories into the old –
there is food from the land
braised and stemmed and sliced and plated,
arugula, squash, corn,
cabbage, beef, cream, watermelon, apples,
there is community
around the table, there is cold water after the wine,
there are cotton sheets
and after it all, in the west lightning skirts and bounces between
cloud and earth and sky,
a silent storm rolling toward the farm, pausing for the coyotes
to howl and sing and in the hills,
their joy in the moment bedecking our dreams.
Our lives are staked out
dream by dream, task by task, choice by choice
across our allotted acres
in chains of our own making
[Everything depends on]
writing the passages
that call us back again, that hold us to the earth,
carving out good where we are,
the only place we can,
goodness and beauty for its own sake
in the universe so dark.
