Poems

Indebted to the Light
With an altitude of 1143 feet above sea level, the air is clear and bracing and because we are close to the source of the stream supply we have the purest water … The whole of our township was originally well wooded and so lumbering was a booming industry.
-Our Chisholm Story 1880–1960

Oh, it bore a farmer’s eye, this light,
a plowman’s and a shepherd’s eye;
an eye for tilling, smoothing, fencing.
It saw the fields, pastures, gardens
disguised under masks of spruce and birch,
bundled into cloaks of moss and humus,
pinned at the dim feet of beech and fir.
In thrall to light we peeled away
the upper flora, floating logs down
to lakes to loose the soil, opening up
the North. Now light plays the heights
of glacier-built hills and drains even
into the creek bottoms. It marries
the wind and paired, they fill the swamps
’til every place is arable. It strikes
a hard bargain, this light; knows
it can’t lose now. Even if we idle
the land, all that arrives is speckled alder,
spindle-limbed and seeping brilliance
onto the earth beneath.

Making Hay

Oh brome, oh sweet
red clover, white alsike and tiny birdsfoot
trefoil, alfalfa, timothy, fescue, rye: July
bounty packaged for January want.
While the sun shines,
long lean boys make hay, dark forearms
pincushioned, tossing forty-pound bales
up like babies;
treading broad boards worn
by decades’ boots,
surfing the wagon as it groans
over hummocks, its spine twisting.
A well-built load flexes and holds
and the boys know how.
Let the fowls of the air do as they please—
we sow, we reap, we gather into barns,
we layer bales in the mow, we breathe
air thick as water. Sunlight jumps
through gaps in the walls, rides the dust
like seahorses.
While the sun shines,
we are princes of the fields,
captains of the wagons;
we make hay and sail high on finished loads,
we see far to the next field, county, continent,
where others toil and spin.
Surely we’ll be here forever; waiting on the land
while the sun shines.

Jonah and the Lamb

The lamb did not die.
Wheezing, motherless thing,
shivering in my lap. God,
please don’t let this lamb die,
I prayed. I fed it milk
from a bottle, smoothed
translucent ears, splashed
tears onto the hay.
Don’t let it die, I prayed.
And the lamb did not die.
In the morning it trotted
to meet me, demanding
the next bottle, delivered.
Did Jonah feel like this
when God changed his mind
about the Ninevites? Relieved,
grateful, but a touch embarrassed
for the drama,
never expecting a response
to prayer, never
anticipating mercy.

Thanks to Poets Corner Reading Series for featuring a reading of Jonah and the Lamb in their One-Minute Poem series.