The Tobacco Seasons

We marked the calendar, not by months,
But by the work to be done.
Spring, breaking the plant beds,
Putting in the seed
Like hope for something different—
Setting tobacco,
With the dust curling in your lungs
And laying there to rest
Like a cat in the sun—
Chopping out,
With the slow creep of hoe on dirt
Like nails on a chalkboard,
To remove weeds for
Topping, in the summer sun,
Breaking off the pink blooms
Thrust skyward like rockets
While we toiled in the sticky shade
With burley leaves caressing our arms
Like lovers.
When summer reached its apex,
There was cutting,
Marking our progress with
Tobacco sticks loaded with
Sagging burley,
While the summer flies
Circled like vultures,
The sky wheeled above
While we marched
To a slow monotone
Of chop of tobacco knife
And slow slide of stalk
Over spike
Like the tick of a metronome.
We hauled it to the barn,
Crucified the tobacco on the tier poles,
While the sun worked off summer
For autumn,
The crickets sang in the goldenrod,
Singing, “This is a Kentucky late summer…
Hear the slow wind in the trees
While you break your back
In the barn”—
Breathe the tobacco,
Hear the swish of the burley
Dragged across the ground
Like the sweep of tired dancers
In ballgowns,
While tobacco worms dropped around
Like rain.
As fall turned to winter,
We waited, while the burley
Once green, dried to brown,
Skeletal fingers hang down
Grabbing your hair
Like clutching hands—
Later, we clutched dead stalks
And stripped them of their leaves
Like robbers
Stripping a grave—
Dust and dirt sang around us a song
Of winter and
The end of seasons,
While we bundled the
Hopes for a better life
In bales and took them to market.

Plant Beds

We caught the turning just right,
Not too hot or too cold,
For the planting of the seed beds—
First the raking, and hoeing,
Our rakes rising and falling
In regular rhythm
While the day dripped by
Like slow melt.
Then come the putting in the seed,
With a spell cast
So the tobacco will grace the sky later,
Covered in a white shroud of canvas
Rippling in the wind
Like a flag on a casket.
Finished now, with Dad and his brothers around,
Leaning on rakes, smoking,
Making coughs that shook
The dirt from the canvas,
We urge the tobacco forth
That will make us live
And die.

**

Stripping Tobacco

The winter strips the earth bare.
The late moon opens it up like bones,
The birch, hickory, stand silent and closed.
So it is in this room,
The tobacco stalks we strip bare,
Brown, dead, dusty, like old mummy skin,
So far removed from the tall green life they were,
So far removed from you and me.
Where once we had water, and green,
Long burley leaves that caressed our arms,
Tall pink blooms that licked the sky,
As summer burned our minds and hearts.
The winter strips the earth bare,
So it is in this place,
Where once we laughed and worked in the field,
Now we stand and work, silent, faced
With the end of seasons, and things,
With no words or songs to describe.
So our hands turn dark like the falling night,
We finish our work, and turn away.

Chopping Tobacco

Memaw chopped out tobacco
In bare feet,
Even in the coldest times,
Her feet muddy,
The weeds about her ankles like vines,
Her hands calloused and dirty,
She worked like a man—
Always working, always bending,
Coming down the rows—
In front of her, the weeds stretched on,
Behind her, the young tobacco
Stood tall like statues
Against the dark earth.
Laughing, coming to the end of the row,
She’d smile, wipe off her feet
Start back up again.

The Flower Garden

When Memaw’s flower garden bloomed,
Peony blossoms like oil paints,
Roses that lifted like lips,
Morning glories that dripped on the trellis,
Water hyacinth that popped like fireworks,
You went through
Drunk with the smell of flowers,
Waiting for the best bloom of all,
Memaw’s smile
Hidden by winter,
Just now emerging
Blooming like the petals
On the vine.

**

Spring Rains

Spring rain works miracles—
Smearing the windshield
So opening tulips
Stream by like rivers
Of red and white,
Turning the barren woods green
Like life emerging from death,
Opening the flowers around the church cross,
Opening my eyes from a long winter,
To look on the world again
As though for the first time—
Seeing the lilies like tears at the cross,
The green of the earth like bread to eat,
The trickle of rain down your chin
Like some new drink
I just have to try.

The Redbuds

It is easy to remember when the redbuds bloom,
Why the winter turns to spring,
Why I turn to you,
To find the warmth again—
Watching the pink buds bloom,
Like bonfires on the barren trees,
Reminds me that I can still yearn—
For the small green breaking the ground,
For the small touch of your hand
On the back of my neck,
Reminds me
I know how to yearn—
As the wind blows
A cluster of blooms by
Like sparks against a
Dark sky—
As your hair lifted off your neck—
I found the words for yearning.

**

A Spring Prayer

Rise from the shadows of this winter,
Dim lights, stray thoughts of frost,
Let us pray to be happy in the coming spring:
To seek comfort in the swarm of bees
Singing arcs around the yellow blooms,
To find light in the patterns
Of dew-rimmed spiderwebs,
To feast on the emerging green
As though it were bread,
To drink of the cold water
That numbs our lips
But opens our eyes.
I have had enough of winter nights,
I pray for the renewal of spring.

**

On Easter

On Easter
There is a thin trickle of electricity
Like when the sun breaks
At dawn
Or the moon edges into a silver pond
Floating like bread.
When the lilies surround the cross
Like watchers for the crucifixion,
When the incense floats
Like angels over the opening tomb,
When taking communion,
The presence descends to comfort,
When you and I and all others
Are connected and one in prayer,
Then, like lightning,
We are left with the afterglow
Behind closed eyelids,
Knowing one day
We will follow where the lightning leads.

**

Hold April

When spring moves into summer,
When humidity creeps up your back,
Clawing up the sweat trickles,
When the fence in the pasture
Unfolds in your walk more slowly,
When the clouds overhead
Hang like tired balloons—
As Jesse suggests,
Hold April,
Remember cool winds still speaking
Of snow,
Remember when color
Caught your eye like elves
And didn’t oppress
Like heavy tones,
Remember May
When she crept around
Your toes and tickled.

Trout Rising

I stood and watched the trout rise,
Where the stream’s roar diminished
To a small babble like laughter.
The slanting sun made shadows run,
Throwing my long shadow out
Over the water, only one of many,
While the caddis fly
Drifted in the sun,
A thousand stars floating down—
The trout rose
Circles in circles spreading out
Making sun and shadow
Mix like spilling paint,
Making me lose my own reflection,
So that I could finally see,
As through the water darkly,
Losing myself here might mean
Finding the reason
The trout rise.

**

Thunder

No more thunder down the railroad tracks,
The trains are gone,
No more thunder over the mountains,
The gods are gone,
Where trains and gods of youth go,
Creep off to dark spaces,
Rusty steel flaking like tears
From old shut eyes,
I don’t know, I don’t know,
But I carried you over the rusty tracks,
Long legs tan, hair flowing,
Lit by the sun like mayflies in the twilight,
And made our own thunder.
I can still hear it in these gray skies,
Still taste it like warm rain,
Still see with old dry eyes,
I still crave thunder,
Under darkening skies,
In fields of gray cement
Where no dreams grow,
I dig for thunder.

**

Kentucky Dreams

I’ve heard it said
In Kentucky,
Dreams run like coal in the hills,
Deep and dark,
If mined too much, they lie
Bleaching in the summer sun.
Better to leave them buried.
I am from Kentucky—
They said I couldn’t make it,
I did.
I was born in poverty that clings
To everything around like shrouds.
I clawed out.
I’ve known the hunger of no food,
Stomachs turning like muddy water.
I’ve grown fat.
I’ve seen my mother cry tears born
From what she couldn’t give me.
I will not cry.
I say,
In Kentucky
Dreams flow like the water
Feeding life into the hills—
Follow them where they run.

**

Falls of Rough

Moments pass in eternities,
Standing here in Falls of Rough—
Before me stands an old mill,
Broken, the jagged teeth of rocks
Thrown up in a soundless scream,
An old bridge torn and ragged,
Like an old flag in the wind,
The remains of a sawmill
And the turning of dark waters.
But I can hear at my back,
The turning of a mill wheel,
The shout and roar of a town,
Its heart beating in time with the wind,
Its mouth shouting in voices of
The miller, the farmer, the logger,
Their voices like the shout
Of the water over the falls,
Loud, turning,
Ceaseless like the sound
Of a hammer on iron
Marking their place in time.
My shadow out before me in the sun,
My steps shake the bridge,
The ghosts of the past walk me home.

**

Writers Block

I had lost the words—
When the leaves fell in October
Like drops of tired rain,
I could not describe them.
When the snow fell
Blanketing the ground like a shroud
I could not say anything.
When the winds stripped the earth bare
Riveting the earth with ice
I could not speak.
I could only close my eyes
Against the cold,
Hold my heart, hide my soul.
With no words for comfort.
Today, in a spray
Of blackbirds among the dogwoods,
Like the ocean blown black and white,
I found the words and wept.

Out Where the Dogwoods Blow

I never knew alone
Until the wind blew across the dogwoods,
Cold wind across the white blooms
Like ice around your heart.
Memaw told me
The blooms were to remind me of Jesus—
The thorny crown, the drops of blood—
But I know now
Jesus would never leave me this alone:
When it’s not winter and not spring,
The cold wind blowing white blossoms
Into the bare limbs and dead leaves,
I walk, my steps silent, slow,
Mourning the passing dogwoods
With their drops of frozen blood.

**

Logging

Daddy was a logger—
He could name every tree in the woods,
Like Adam naming the beasts of the earth.
He could make a chainsaw sing
Songs of hills, and stones—
The trees sang their lament
When they fell, and still he worked.
The diesel smell ran through the forest—
He worked.
The logs piled up, like funeral pyres,
Still he worked.
They hauled them away,
On trucks that groaned and complained—
Still he worked, until—
Until a limb came down, and crushed his friend,
Took his friend’s dreams, and took his friend’s life,
And sank them into the cold Kentucky ground,
Where the trees sang their lament.
Then he stopped working.

Rusted Car

I have turned up old cars
In the brush and vines, just looking,
Wondering, who thought so much
Of the car
That the earth should dispose
And not the junkyard.
The red-tailed hawk
Found it nice,
A nice perch for looking for mice
And snakes,
And flew with a screech,
Offended,
And circled in the dingy sky
With cries like the screech
Of rust.
The car, given over to hawk and mouse,
No more to know the heat of the winding road,
No more to know the heat of the lovers touch,
No more to feel the slide of the skid,
Looked at the world with dark windshield—
Walking away, all in all, I thought,
There are worse things to be
Than given over for the screeching hawk
Or silent watcher of the flowering vine.

**

On Losing Myself

I lost myself, many years ago,
Somewhere between the old house
And the turning stream—
Not miles between each,
But only a short walk,
Down a hill peppered with buttercups
Flowing like melting ice,
Over a stranded fence
And through a silent grove.
The house, fallen,
It’s windows like dim eyes,
Staring, is covered in ivy
Rooted in the darkness,
Whispers of old things,
Long gone.
The stream, in the silent grove,
Silver tinged with green,
Goes deep into the forest,
Bubbles with promise of
An unbroken thread
Stretching into forever.
I am somewhere between—
That was years ago,
I do miss me,
But I can smile to know
I am somewhere
In the spring sun turning
Like arcs of lightning
Through the sky.

**

The Back Pasture

Walking the back pasture,
Early spring,
With cold winds still
Complaining of snow
Licking about my legs—
Spread before me
In the short grasses
Still testing the air to grow,
Wild violets grew across the field
A smear of purple dotted
With small dandelion
Like stars across the twilight sky.
Further back, unnoticed before
In walks I had made over and over,
A small gravestone marked a turn
Under the hem of an overhanging willow.
No name was left—nothing to mark
The life and passing of someone
Who slept, drank, ate
Walked these same woods.
Walking on, I mourned the thought
Of a life and death gone unnoticed—
As I turned to home,
It occurred, it might not be so bad,
To see someone passing
With eyes of wild violet
And to say hello
With winds across the spring grasses.

Making Connections

I touched the barbed wire
Silent through the woods,
Where the tree had grown over
Like a human scab.
It said, we are temporary,
Like mayflies in the spring,
Soon to be gone
When the earth shrugs,
Nothing human will stay.
I walked the cemetery,
Where the stones were broken,
Gone, dissolved,
The names gone like passing echoes,
In the driving rain
So no wandering eye
Can find the trace.
Nothing human will stay.
I touched your hair today,
Smelled the trace of flowers,
Held my boy’s hand—
In these small moments,
I know for certain
When all my life is gone,
Something human will remain.

Fragility

Most things are fragile—
The spring winds that blow
Across the emerging hills
Crisp like cold cider
As they sweep across your face,
Fresh with the scent of flowers
All too soon to be saddled with humidity
And rode hard.
The blooms of the daffodil,
Rising like saints to heaven,
Daring mornings
too cold for humans,
Soon to be gone
As the season passes.
The whisper of your gown
Like voices
Across your arm,
Blown by those spring breezes,
Captured in my mind for an eternity
But gone as the wind changes.
I close my eyes
To hold on to what is fragile.

**

My Ashes

When I am gone, do not mourn—
I am flying over the Kentucky mountains
Below me rolling like waves in the fog.
I am twisting in the music of mandolins
Off remote porches.
I am sounding off the hollows of hardwood forests,
Standing in the twilight like angels.
I am flowing downhill in some high stream,
Glinting like diamonds in the morning light.
As for the rest, spread my ashes
At my old homeplace—
To go feed some other Kentucky dream.

END