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Straight Story, Revisited
I’m an old farmer
Name’s not Alvin
Never ridden my Deere
‘cross three states.
Like my lifespan, my farm’s
shrinking; I grow older--
have to sell my true love,
life blood--wife says the same
Our land. ‘Cross township
lines, out front windows
Quik-stops, office buildings
crowdin’ near.
Still sell my produce
on a smaller scale now
Set up a stand, the wife
waits inside, a few coins
for tomatoes, corn, beans.
One day, sold some sunflowers
to a tall stranger, city girl
couldn’t believe how happy
she was with her purchase.
Doesn’t know I might not be here
next year, developers closin’ in
offerin’ me more and more. They
know its value, ‘twas my pappy’s land
purchased it for all he was worth
back in ‘21. When he passed in ‘74
It was mine. No one left
to farm it though, boys took off--
Got city jobs, don’t see ‘em much
anymore.
Don’t see anyone ‘cept these new folks
All drivin’ fancy cars--no more
Fords & Chevys piled high with
feed & hay & scrubbed kids on Sundays
headin’ for church.
Wife doesn’t see much either
Eyesight goin’ dim. Have to
Set up a cup for the honor system
this year. Hope we get a
good crop.
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Imagine Mason
Imagine Mason, close community, rolling fields
flatlands filled with future foodstuffs, even a cow or
horse once in a while. One room schoolhouses set out
on the platted land, churches’ small white steeples
pointed, pointing toward God above modest clapboard. Mainstreet, USA, so cliché even Disney had to dream it; storefronts filled with Hopperesque vision on a lonely
Sunday afternoon, sunlight searching but not finding
thoughts of founding Fathers behind blind windows.
What were they thinking, or is this a new breed?
Dreamers, schemers, big-time developers, Imagine
Mason, they say, we’re Building your Future, your
utopia-dreamtown, streets safe from a life-o’-crime,
inner-city dirty darkness nowhere to be found. Imagine
Mason, they say, with names like Water’s Edge
(a retention pond), Mallard’s Cove (no ducks, no lakes),
Crooked Tree (used to be Trees before they were uprooted).
Imagine, they say, a golf course for every
day of the week (just like underwear).
Imagine a bedroom community, clean Children tucked
into clean white beds, sent off to newly bricked and gabled
megaschools or sillynamed daycares. And after you
retrieve your offspring (from Lucky Leprechaun, Kids R
People 2 or Wonderland), imagine driving (Land Rover,
Expedition, Navigator) up your street Searching for your
new Home in the dusk (did it have two sides of brick, or three?).
Imagine a Life you’ve always dreamed of, everything
you’ve always wanted as your eyes wander out windows of
bayed breakfast nooks to untouched fields beyond. In your
dreams, you’re picking flowers, playing simple games
like hide and seek as you run through ready-to-harvest
rows of corn. You’re learning to drive your dad’s new
Deere, dreaming of tire swings and watering holes, sunsets
and backroads, dreaming of your old yellow dog, playing
in creeks, climbing trees, coming in tired to dinners of
sliced tomatoes still warm from the fields. Dreaming
of yesterdays and tomorrows that you can
only Imagine.
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Dreamland (On Growing Old)
No more late morning sleep-ins
Wake up early now, see sharp sun turn
Nothing into colors, melt dew into fairy dust
swirling blue vapor from brown, green.
Wipe the wet from my V-twin/once a Schwinn
but ass-hauling’s harder than it used to be.
Swing out onto up and down road, cold
cow-scented wind stings my nose
Speed up straightaway--clandestine cartographer
beats me to it--rows and rows of new growth
Mapped out. A new world; the New World
Open and free and ready for seeds and societies.
Farms the new frontier; I take it in
On the back of my horse, iron now, for fast
getaways, speedy arrivals. Bank the turns
Court a creekbed rushing with Spring’s swollen
Promises of a sunny-day tomorrow. I chase
her curvy lines through fields soft with angelhair flowers
Woven into daisychain dreams leading to the dark secret
Grove of long ago.
You meet me here, Moonpie, RC cola in hand,
frosty from the hinge-top freezer standing guard
on the porch of Ed’s Feed & Seed. You talk of the land:
heat rising from road-ribbons like mystic mirage,
cruising through warm walls of corn, rush of cool as you
meet creek air. It’s a dreamland, you say
Never seen anything like it; hope it’s here forever
‘Cause when it’s gone, it’s gone.
Am I dreaming, or was I before? I’m older now
My bike’s a wheelchair, my gaze restricted:
a patch of puny petunias, a triangle of turf
From my window of the Village where I’ve been left.
I don’t get out much, but it doesn’t bother me.
My dreams have been over/taken over
by overzealous young men/women; divided,
subdivided, so it all looks the same, so it all looks
Different. I’m glad you’re not here to see it.
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