Canticle for the Wabash Valley

Driving home at dusk I see the clouds of midge grow damp

in the last thin haze. A low plane banks some silent distance away

and the corn sways silver above the curving road.

The tiger lilies have been tamed

by August heat and the blackberries offer

only chiggers and a brace of thorns.

There were days when driving was an art

and I’d take restless, reckless trips through sleeping

towns and countryside. Dark shops waited

for the early birds, and parking lots cast light against the bellies

of water towers. I was not a god, not even a small one,

but I sent blessings out into space and wished a good life to every friend,

the minor miracles of fidelity and a comfortable bed,

a boss that didn’t kick or bite, graves that remain

unused. I passed the empty car wash and the homely beauty

supply store. I passed the city park and its delinquent, noisy geese.

I turned the car where the road grew fat,

backtracked through the recent past, headlights

clipping guardrails, the blue reflectors at the ends of driveways.

God hid behind the moon. The radio played a soft gospel

of static. I drove on as if movement itself were prayer.                                                               printable

Swisher Sweets

In back of Jack’s Crab Shack,

a man wrings out bar towels

and smokes a Swisher Sweet.

The trumpet vine run riot

over the faded paint façade.

At dusk the rabbits grow

suicidal as the Mennonites empty

cash boxes from unmanned fruit stands

and the shadows of highway signs stretch east

forever.

The aroma of cheap cigars

and corn silk brings back five generations

we’ve lost to the soil of southern Indiana.

Dainty aunts in pillbox hats file past

open-faced coffins, patting the shoulders of the dead,

crying into embroidered kerchiefs,

How natural.

In the ground beneath the elementary ‘s

new cafeteria my father lost an eye tooth on a see saw.

Also my Grandmother’s diamond engagement ring

twinkles in the darkness next to unsuspecting worms.

One whole summer of my youth the churches roiled and grumbled

until the grade school changed its name from  the Red Devils to the Vikings.

Overnight we went from Gentleman Callers to Northern marauders.

Now my feet grow dirty beneath a porch swing in Kentucky.

Trucks rumble past and frighten the pop-eyed kitten.

A haze holds sway over a field of hay

and I have come to love my rough forefathers

the way I have come to love flour dusting a butcher-block table,

and the blaze of tiger lilies crowding a cobalt vase.

The cool spot downhill of the cistern where chickens scratch for feed.

Dreams are heady as creek beds in August

and the moon rises slow as an old man

whose visit has ended. He says again to the ears of the unlistening

corn, I guess it’s time I headed home.                                                                                                printable

Confession

I can tell you now

that you are my favorite.

You have outlasted all the rest.

As a boy I said straight to your face

that I loved my other grandmother but you

not at all. In an instant you grew taller

and more distant, but I bounced away

to the playroom and gouged the eyes

of my mother’s forgotten dolls.

Now you shrink and close in on yourself.

You set your face to the light. The empty hours

pull the dust around them like a shawl.                                                                                              printable