Tag: poem

Versus the Wind While Camped Near a Failing Farmhouse

~ johnbrandall

Oak tree at Lee-Vaughan Farm (photo courtesy Patrick Vaughan)

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.

Billy tending to a tent on the move (photo courtesy Patrick Vaughan)

Hay Bales, Highway 50

~ johnbrandall

I realized there was more to Missouri
that summer, working in the middle of the state.

On Fridays I'd take Highway 50 from
Jeff City to Union, through antique towns,
past fields of hip-high grass that hushed
wispy and soft, green-gold in
June and July's late-setting light.

The spell would break hard when
I hit the interstate, leaving only a fleeting
afterimage as I braced for the
reality of lane changes and going
home, to my parents.

One August evening, somewhere west of Rosebud
I drove past a field whose grass was freshly
cut, left to hay in shaggy rolls, two dozen
of them spread out like a herd of bison grazing
quiet in a pasture holding nothing else
but a single sun-soaked tree.

At its far end the field ran up against a treeline,
giving rise to one of Missouri's unsung hills.
Above the hill a hawk tracked higher on
a thermal while cumulus and contrail
slowly absorbed the colors of the sunset.

I was late getting home that night.
When my parents asked me where I'd been I
said nothing, only handed them
this photograph.

…Do I Sleep in the Bed or in the Drawer?

~ johnbrandall

1 

There are twenty drawers
but only one keyhole

2 

bite guard
rubber band
cough drop

3 

Assorted drawers in maple frames
 stacked on a slant, askant

4 

lint brush
lavender
lip balm

5 

A warp of wood
hitched in a jute strap
fourteen years in the making

6 

night creams
magazines 
and dreams

7 

“The drawers are the sliding parts.”
“What do you call the rest of it?”
“A nightstand”

8

is empty

9 

nail file
paper clip
flashlight

10 

“This one’s locked.”
“There must be a key.”
“Maybe in here—”

Continue with the drawers...

Sestina for a Far-Off Farmhouse

~ johnbrandall

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...

Farm March 2017—Outhouse Edition.

~ johnbrandall ~ 1 Comment

I.      Wood for which the flames to lick...

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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