As are most of my poems, today's is fairly straightforward, dealing with harsh realities. These are still just as harsh, and just as real, I'm sure, as when I was growing up in Southern Illinois.
How dependent, how at the mercy of the weather, were those who tried to make a living from the soil.
Life was one big gamble, and nobody knew the odds, exactly, except that they always seemed to be against the players.
Rather than a single, memorable incident, this piece represents an accumulation of impressions, and is about no particular, single farmer, but all farmers who face the odds and keep playing this most difficult game, betting against the weather year after year.
The poem:
IF IT RAINS
Paper-dry corn emits a sigh
as an arid breeze riffles
the long, dead rows
of ochre and gray, searching
for moisture. Even weeds
are limp with thirst.
Last year had been a good one,
so he paid down some debt
and, less burdened,
plowed and planted once more
on gentle, warming slopes
as spring returned.
It may rain tomorrow, he says,
knowing that it's too late
to salvage this crop.
But if it does rain tomorrow,
next week, or next month,
that may be enough
to sustain last spring's hopes
through the rages of winter,
and he will plow again.
© 2003
(originally published in Capper's, this poem is from my first collection, Chance of Rain, published in 2003 by Finishing Line Press)
***
Today's word:
if
3 comments:
What a luxury to turn on your site and have a different poem and thoughts each day! This one goes right to the heart--or bone, or where ever this type of difficulty in life goes. As I've mentioned, it was orchards on our farm, and you did the same amount of work and same amount of expenses into spraying, no matter how the crop did. I know one fellow just north of Cobden who had waited to inherrit the orchards and did. He went through tough times and ended up moving out west to work for someone else as the head of some other kind of orchards. The next year in Southern Illinois was a good one and all said--if he'd only waited one more year. He couldn't have counted on that, though.
Your poem hits the soul...well done!
Wow, your poem describes perfectly the environment in the small KS town where I worked once! The nurses told their husbands and sons they had a "city girl" for a business manager who wanted to get a ride on the combine and learn how wheat is farmed. I met the husbands and their sons, the most down to earth and friendly people! They got a laugh how exicted I was to be part of the harvesting, but it was a lifelong memorable experience.
I remember too, the patients coming in with poison ivy all the time, found on their farms. Wearing overalls or work clothes, weathered and tanned faces. Always talking about the weather, when was it going to rain or not, how much wheat they'd lose if it didn't rain or lost if it had rained too much too early. That was 2006, and it felt like I'd stepped back into time living there.
Would you mind if I shared your poem with them? Though I am far from there now, my friend works in that place and I bet they'd put your poem on the wall next to reception and so many would identify with it and enjoy it very much!
PS - I would give them your site instead, but almost all of them do not have a computer :) It's very 1950's in that little town! I understand if you prefer I don't share it though, I want to respect your copyright and right to sell your work.
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