a poem

Wolf’s Trees J. D. McClatchy

If trees fall in a wood and no one hears them, Do they exist except as a page of lines That words of rapture or grief are written on? They are lines too while alive, pointing away From the primer of damped air and leafmold That underlie, or would if certain of them Were not melon or maize, solferino or smoke, Colors into which a sunset will collapse On a high branch of broken promises. Or they nail the late summer’s shingles of noon Back onto the horizon’s overlap, reflecting An emptiness visible on leaves that come and go. How does a life flash before one’s eyes At the end? How is there time for so much time? You pick up the book and hold it, knowing Long since the failed romance, the strained Marriage, the messenger, the mistake, Knowing it all at once, as if looking through A lighted dormer on the dark crest of a barn. You know who is inside, and who has always been At the other edge of the wood. She is waiting For no one in particular. It could be you. If you can discover which tree she has become, You will know whether it has all been true.                                                                                             for Wolf Kahn

AWESOME

“Pain Is Weakness Leaving the Body” by Kirk Schlueter

Posted: 13 Apr 2018 12:00 AM PDT by Rattle


Kirk Schlueter


PAIN IS WEAKNESS LEAVING THE BODY

They lashed the nine-year-old to the plow.

This is not a metaphor.

His older brothers knotted the reins across his skinny shoulders.
Their horse was dead and the field had to be planted,

and the brothers, though some were six years older,
were lazy. So they made the youngest do it,

only five days after watching his favorite brother
lowered into the small grave: stamp of shovel onto dirt.

No cross, no prayers. Just the corpse

he wasn’t allowed to hug goodbye for fear of typhus.
And he did it, the boy. He plowed,

sucking his own breath in hard hour after hour,
cutting row after row of earth for corn seed,

his knobby legs and narrow shoulders the only weight

dragging the blade through rocky Illinois clay,
until the sun crawled into his stomach

and he collapsed, not even unlashing himself
but taking care to avoid the seed as he threw up

the day’s long work, all the light within him.

He did this all summer and when the harvest came in,
no one said a word of thanks—not his brothers,

not his father too sick to leave bed. But still he plowed

the next summer unasked, and the summer after that,
to save the money for the horse, and though no one

ever once offered a word of praise or even that old standby,
a gruff pat on the head, he never once complained.

If I tell you that boy was my great-grandfather,
can you understand what I learned those candy years

I was a boy—that your face is a mask you never take off,

and only men broken on the earth’s dark axis
let their trials conquer them? No one ever said it,

but I took it in each time I woke at four a.m.
to my father’s boots tramping up and down the driveway

to break the ice with a shovel,
each time my grandfather pulled his own weeds

until he had to slump in the shade and fan his head
with a faded St. Louis ball cap.

A man endures what must be endured, a body’s toil,
the cringing static of the mind, and if he ever feels

he’s falling, that he can’t take another damn step,
well, he sucks in his breath, and endures that too.


—from Rattle #58, Winter 2017
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist

__________


Kirk Schlueter: “For me, poetry is an escape. No matter what the subject matter, I think there’s something inspiring and powerful in how the poet shapes the words and delivers the emotion. I try to always read poems on my lunch break for the small shivers of wonder and beauty they give me in the middle of the day. For me, poetry lives between the hum of ordinary moments, providing a spark that lifts us momentarily to something greater. And the best poems I read, the poems I try and fail over and over again to write, embed that spark so deep it stays with you for hours and days and years afterward (think Charles Wright, think Vievee Francis). Enjoy all these poems as you would your favorite snack: cheese and crackers, apple slices, vegetables dunked in ranch. And then smile! Because whoever you are, you’re really great, and I appreciate you reading. Now go be awesome.”

CREDIBILITY