Rain,
Light rain tonight,
Missouri farm.
After the neighbors have helped,
After they have asked after us
Who are growing up here
Six days a year.
Mice droppings on divan.
Recluse on back porch, ghost-brown.
Dust and dauber carcasse.
Somehow the lights still work.
Weeds, stickers, tag-alongs.
Jimson weed and bramble...
I know it knows we are here.
As we talk about the wind it quiets off.
It collects itself in the far corner of the field,
takes a running start, launches at us again.
It seems to want something. I wonder
if it takes as much pleasure in sending a tent
flying as we take in seeing a tent on the move.
It translates a gunshot, it stokes the fire.
It pries metal from the shed,
it pulls the hat from your head.
It opens one door, slams another.
It absconds with the coffee filters.
It leaves dirt on the doorstep,
it tries to speak in the trees.
It takes popcorn from the plate
but doesn’t eat it.
It takes twenty dollars from the ledge
but doesn’t spend them.
It loosens your hair in the air
but it does not love you.
The wind is how hay stretches
It is how rock changes color
It is where the smoke goes
But at dusk
the wind follows the light
over the wide horizon.
We unpack our things
and lay them about
like feathers.
As a fire burns
we listen to
a whip-poor-will
sing into the still air
of the night
as it winnows
its lonesome away.
My time in this house is limited
The walls swell, the floors crawl
The doors don't add up
I have driven everyone away
The roof is caving
The chimney's twisted
But the clocks are never wrong
When I leave they'll all come back
But I will not leave
And I cannot stay
At times I arrive to find somebody
has been there, raided it, trashed the place. Or water
has tricked the roof, creating interior weather.
Once the front door dropped a pane, waved in winter.
I had to shoo an upstart family of robins
who cursed me all the way to the creek.
One April I took a bath in the creek,
submerged in a pool, current run along my body.
When I emerged my head was as clear as the robin’s.
Someone said, “You know we turned the water
on?” I thought of trees dressing after winter
when three deer appeared, rejoicing in the weather.
Continue with poem...
There is a heron working the creek, a big blue bird with slow wing-beats. I've never seen one here before. The Little Tavern was flowing strong, its overflow channel along the road deep as I've ever driven through.
I've got radio going in the house...
Continue reading...
Dateline Farm, woodsmoke hands, Miles on a Bluetooth speaker.
It's a riff from the Jack Johnson Sessions. It's not one of the better songs on the album but it's not the worst music I've heard today.
That 'reward' goes to the songs I heard coming across 'Orscheln Radio' whilst I searched for all and sundry at the Orscheln Farm and Home in Owensville, MO on my drive out here this afternoon. Folks, this is Hawley Country.
Continue reading...
I.
Dateline Farm. First tea of the season. October 11—kind of late for first tea, methinks. B agrees. It's Thursday. She took a sicker.
It's sunny and breezy. The blue jays make ratchety calls. All in all the place was in good shape upon our arrival. The freezer was running strong. The four trays of ice were cold and full. I cracked them and filled the owl, part-way. It amazes me that old freezer works so well. Even the fridge compartment had a chill to it, which isn't always true. I was here three weeks ago; left it running in anticipation...
Every car and truck that could've passed us has done so by now. Oh wait, here's a couple more. I will need to make a stop for gas; the tank is about a third full. I'll stop in Vienna or maybe at that gas station along the jog at 133 and 42. Two choppers appear, now three. Low. Military. Black and grey. A fourth. The Cards and Nats are knotted at two after six innings. Where are those choppers going?
Bob's Gasoline Alley. Old filling station signs and alpacas. Vacuum Museum, exit 195. This semi I'm tailing is going a little slow but sitting content in its draft takes all of the decision work out of driving, a relief and a condition necessary to the drafting of this travelogue.
Indeed, the coffee maker was in the lazy susan. The apple cider vinegar was also still here, all that mother settling like ore to the bottom of the bottle. Days earlier I had bought some black pepper style pea snap snacks for my wife, who shunned them hard. I brought them down and will stash them for some(one's) future use.
I've found over these last several years of my life that my favorite hobby concerns this Farm. I have developed a fascination with the place. I love bringing things down and stashing them here. Then when I return a quarter of a year later—is it still here? Do I even remember having stashed it? I get a kick out of that moment, "Oh yeah, I did bring down a tube of marine caulk, awesome!"
Farmhouse fajitas, nachos, Helm at the helm, old time music, fiddles, a nearly full moon, clean cool air. Chucking my banana peel toward the brushline, cabbage shards. My nose is cold and runny. Hat on, hoody, vest, thermal, two pair sox, crox. Hot dog on the stove in foil this morning, baked potato on and then in the stove last night. Splitting wood, getting wood, arranging wood, burning wood. Excursion to Iberia via Brays Church Road, church there at 42, Mount Gilead, cemetery too. Pastures, cows, farm dogs just chillin not chasin. I cut up a fallen ash that wasn't nearly as dead as I thought, somehow still going at a forty-five degree angle and living on and through the v-trunk of another tree, maybe the second hickory species here, without shaggy bark and difficult to split—pignut? The four horses are still here, two white, one black, one...Appaloosa? I thought that word and then Helm said that word so it must be so. A sparse, low fog rolled in. I spoke of Misty at Chincoteague, we talked about wild horses...
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