by Robert Lietz
Headlamps glow then dull, broaden at 3 a.m.,
a not so old man tractoring sun up,
the sun well-born for Indiana, Iowa,
before a man climbs down
for coffee and kids’ chatter. Hours to run,
hours labor and enough luck
combine that elsewhere, this meanwhile,
average his dead back, behind
the large green thing he pilots with his dead,
through his own and the rented acres.
A right balance — of memory, of eye
and seasons in one place –
quickens blood to turn a piece of land familiar,
the sky he looks for rainbow in,
the almost formless cotton print, taking
shapes when her arms lift it,
taking his own breath. Let the grass
turn ravenous, he thinks,
as this ancient wrestling, beneath a formal sun,
turns the highnoon pour
of a man’s sweat and hose-water to fool’s gold.
Hadn’t he worked like this for years?
And hadn’t the work, the land been theirs,
these uncles he believes,
these grandfathers, he thinks, costumed
themselves
like last century guildhalls, trying
out their sights, prompting
their grandchildren at Scheutzenfest,
exciting the kids to see
the hand-painted, hand-glued
targets fly apart?
***
He dreams kin back and back — his eyes
fist-tight with the noon’s glare –
dreams cartwheeling drifts of accents and old songs,
as believable as cold a man can hear
with both ears open, the winters behind him
and ahead, abiding his glance east
over the tracked earth, over this year’s soybeans,
the last or the next years’ stalks.
So he imagines shade and seepage out of stone,
quiet for Love’s sake, and sober
for their sakes, stands, waist-naked and alight,
watching the Chryslers and DeSotos
rocketing the night roads home, finny
and flame-red, filling his man
-shaped spills of hose-water
and star-dark.
