Forrest Pritchard's Blog, page 6

Farm Poem #23

Was it you who
Hung a gate with
No fence and
Latched it closed,

Guarding only grass
And July heat?
Something told me
I should ask.

We’ve passed in
Our cars of course,
As close to talking
As often occurs—

Each feeling
The anxious space
Of un-gardens,
Un-fields,

And that voice,
Insisting we complete
What we don’t know
Why we started.

Farm Poem #22

The last day of spring,
Setting posts beneath
A molten solstice sun,

And stripped to the waist,

By noon I’m scorched

Pink as the dawn,

Thinking of those recently

Concluded commencement

Speeches everywhere,

The ones preaching sunscreen

And worrying about

Not worrying about

What comes next—

And I can’t help but wonder,

Why we rarely hear about

What came before, what continues:

Plunged through radiance

Into a world of sunburnt professors,

Delivered on a sunbeam,

Each morning, noon, evening,

Commencement.

Farm Poem #21

The low hanging cherries are soon gone,

Eaten on the spot, seeds spit

Everywhere. But looking up, there are

Ten thousand more just out of reach,

A constellation of fruit

Sweetening the sapphire sky.

But. My tallest ladder only goes halfway!

But. There are so many!

One cherry, one cherry, one cherry,

Until the colander—quite spacious—is filled.
And, sighing at the baubled branches
Beyond reach, descending the ladder,

What else, but to discover

An overlooked, solitary cherry,

Only inches from my nose?

Farm Poem #20

Each time the wind arrives

Howling from Chicago,

Bent on bending skyscrapers,

A towering sycamore on the farm

Responds by raging

In consent, tearing off

Great chunks of itself,

Muscled limbs rippling as,

Clutching twigs to its trunk,

It strips back the ivy,

The bark of its skin,

Revealing its rib cage, organs,

Tearing out its

Three wooden hearts

And hurling them,

There! There! There!

For all the wind to see.

“Yes wind!” the tree roars,

Bent backwards,

Torqued, tortured, groaning,

“Oh, mighty wind!”

Agonized, not knowing

What else to do,

It suddenly screams,

Ripping off

Its own splintered head,

Holding it aloft, triumphant,

Before crashing it,

Thunderously,

Against its sodden feet.

“Take it, terrible!” the lipless
Mouth cries. “It’s yours!
Oh, I hear you!

I hear you!”
And, hearing it is heard,
The wind softens, fades away,

Because that’s what

Winds seem to want—

If they want anything.

And the sycamore?

Not as old as the elements

But no stupid sapling,

The tree soaks its silent roots,

Subtly sending up

One green shoot, then another,

Until—there! Below

The freshly washed sky,

The always laughing sun,

The tiny top of its mottled head,

Hidden safe, hidden close all along,

Begins to slowly grow, once again.

Farm Poem #19

The drive shaft shears,

Marvelous explosion,

Hollow steel torn twain,

Sharding in all directions,

And up on the tractor

I’ve just enough presence

To duck and cover,

Throwing off the lever

While the twisted metal,

Barely slowing,

Slaps, beating itself dead

Like a fish at the bottom of a boat.

Silly, trembling hands—

How would you have protected me?

The steel speaks with conviction,

Its mouth a jagged sneer.

I’m attentive, then,

When an hour later,

The parts manager laughs

And says, “I see your problem!”

But actually seems to see little,

Seems to hear little,

Country radio in the background,

Eyes scrolling the computer screen,

Quoting sixteen hundred dollars

With practiced indifference

Before I point out the correct part:

Sixty four bucks.

So what? So what?

Pushing the mirrored doors,

Why do I wish to speak like

Flying steel, bright and gleaming,

Clear as the light of death?

Why do I seek my

Reflection in the leaden

Eyes of a stranger,

Clapping trembling hands to my head,

Not in defense, or disbelief,

But to contain the joy, unbidden,

Certain to spring forth?

Farm Poem #18

Then the honeybees arrive,

Three thousand

Lost on a sugar nut branch,

Thin air, thick.

Woven with wings,

A ball bound to itself,

Globular, pendulous,

Swayed by the wind,

A living drip

That won’t drop.

When the beekeeper comes,

Barehanded, bareheaded,

He sweep-scoops them

Into the open top of the hive,

A frame-filled box, where,

Flowing,

They pour themselves

Across golden hexagons,

Disappearing,

Honeycomb, home.

But look!

At the entrance,

Four drones emerge,

Abdomens raised, throb-wiggling,

Wafting pheromones

Into the invisible sky,

To where the last of the swarm,

Glazed like honey in the bark,

Too delicate for gathering,

Has been left behind.

Scent. Signal.

Ah, to take good

Care of one another,

To whisper,

“Here. This way,”

When someone is

Lost.

Silently. Entirely silent!

First one, then another,

The last of the bees wing homeward.

Farm Poem #17

The wind that starts from nowhere,

The same that bends the pasture,

Is the whispering voice of my lover;

The hollering voice of the cowherd,

Call and response to the cattle,

Is my lover’s quickened pulse;

The breath of sweet pollen,

Exhaled from May orchard grass,

Is the same as my lover’s breath;

The black hose, mistaken for

A black snake in blue grass

Is only my lover’s arm, roped over me in sleep;

The gapped boards of the barn door,

Imperfect beneath a Saturday sky,

Is my lover smiling;

The fox, darting only to turn,
Staring, ears tufted like rose buds,
Has the same ears as my listening lover;

The fireflies, flickering beneath bats,
With tree frogs trilling,
Are my lover’s eyes, observing.

Farm Poem #16

Portrait of the Farmer with a Young Frog

E. E. Cummings

Pronounced spring

Mud-luscious,

Puddle-wonderful,

And reading this at age fifteen,

I nearly fell from my wooden desk—

November at Virginia’s oldest,

Coldest high school, tepid

Radiator tinking industrial notes,

And the classroom smelling of Milton,

A sesquicentennial of chalk dust.

I had been born from that same spring,

Feral on my grandparents’ farm,

Vernal marsh spread below

The slowly sinking cowshed—

Knew that paradise plain,

Oozing warm muck

Between bare toes,

Squish-splashy,

Springtime in full slime,

Dripping with juice,

A sopping sponge of everything slick;

Knew the half-formed creatures that

Squiggle-fled

My shadow’s shadow,

Liquid mud cloud-

Cupped in hoof-prints,

Burrowing into clay wombs,

From which—if I squatted

Perfectly still, perfectly silent—

Two eyes like periscopes

Would emerge at last,

Seeing-not-seeing me;

Sun-blind, plunging hands

Into the marsh,

I scooped soil, roots,

Clods of marl,

Filtering through fingertips,

Slippery slitherers

Squipping free,

Squeezing nothing but

Earth, so black,

—Stratified, saturated—

Dyed with death;

No, not death.

Something else;

Mint and mallow

And lush tussocks of sedge,

Bunched arpeggios,

Supple stepping stones;

Cattails kneeling in

Thin water,

Ripe with spurtive larvae;

Fluid mirrors

Reflecting;

Deeper, knee-deep,

Pants rolled and schluck-schlucking,

Blindly mucking,

Probing for firmness beneath;

Marvelous filth, calf-clinging,

Coated in wondrous, wholesome stench,

Each step a gassy, belching burp,

Closer to the pond’s edge,

Property of snapping turtles,

Hoary with moss,

Carrying the moist world on their backs;

Puddle-wonderful! An inch below the surface,

Thousands of wriggling red worms,

Bright as blood,

Thin as the finest filament of unwound yarn,

Eyelash-long—look, they writhe like medusae,

Spasmodic snakes swaying,

Feasting on floating, microscopic scum.

Microscopic to us!

Scum to us!

Their monstrous mouths gulp,

The water awash in food, alive;

All alive!

Mud-glorious metamorphosis

Of the wing-gilled salamander,

Crayfish husking its carapace,

Tadpoles trading tails for legs;

Wood ducklings tumbling from

Sycamore knot nests,

Flat-footed swampers;

Goslings pipping

From the egg,

Trapped, until the instant they’re not;

School of mud;

Classroom of mud;

Teacher of mud;

Art of mud;

Language of mud;

Geometry of mud;

Chemistry of mud;

Osmosis of mud;

Student of mud;

Childhood of mud,

Observed close!

What lovely nonsense, aprilmay,

When Cummings splashed words,

Leap-plunging two-footed,

Eager to sink

Who knows how deep—

But certain,

Each spring,

That dark winter

Melts,

Muck-licious,

Making us.

Farm Poem #15

The master craftsman shot his

Netflix sizzle reel

In my barn last month;

The brewmaster pitched me on

Economic leverage

In downtown New Carrolton;

The master chef led a group of

Inchoate consumers

Past my market stand;

The pit master praised

His barbecue sauce,

Insisting I taste his tang;

And the master gardener paused,

Looking askance when I posited:

“No one ever says ‘farm master’”,

To which she replied,

(Too quickly, too eagerly, I felt)

“I’ll be the first to start.”

I shook my head.

“That will be, I’d wager,

A lonely compost hill upon which to die.

Though on the bright side,” I added,

“You wouldn’t have far to go.”

She stared meekly at this, nonplussed,

Implying I have yet to master

Gardening jokes, or much at all,

So far as I can tell—

Yet I see the grass silently

Bandaging the soil;

The ewe plucking honeysuckle shoots,

Succulent, nourishing;

The hive shuddering for

The joy at the locust bloom.

What a pleasure to lose myself

To each day,

An apprentice on my own farm.

How serene not to know,

To be a master of none, and,

At each dew-soaked dawn, of nothing!

Farm Poem #14

Spring brings more than can be—

Blossoms melting into soil,

Seedlings crowding for sunshine.

I find the lamb

By the broken wall,

Abandoned or lost or both,

Castaway quadruplet,

Victim of abundance.

How his tail shakes

As he takes the bottle,

Sucking the milk dry.

Amongst the flush of

Chickweed he is sated,

And curls close to my boot,

Self-adopted in the April sun.

Life wishing to live.

Some people believe in death!

The lamb naps while

I nudge a walnut hull,

Last autumn’s spring,

A sphere of tree.

Who could fathom such a thing?

Within the cathedral of my legs,

The lamb is already dreaming.