Land of the Downstream People

The mules all hitched and working
The slopes of your eyes

Listening with the clock you carry
Handless in your heart
Mornings the wind blows into the children
And the moon full and flowing this side of Ozark
Smouldering like a burnt tick

Underfoot the rocks with dust in their ears
Lost roads leading
To the bad roads

Let me
Witness the mark
Of the moth in my hair

One night it rains enough
To strangle a hog

Something dead nailed to a post

In the hollow a shovel flies
Out of a grave

But in Kansas I walk with my head down
Like a sick dog

My father-in-law owns Bourbon County Implement
Company
It being Uncle John country
I don't know about these people
And neither does he

They don't know when to quit they work
All night in the fields like a lake named in their honor
Everyone with their boat and their lamp
Trolling through milo maize

In Arkansas at this time of night
A man would be cranking the arm of an ice cream bucket
Or an old telephone
Bringing up angle worms out of the earth

We're installing a clutch
Welding by dark
Closely watched and timed by men
As if we're cutting something loose from kin

All men good for nothing or not listen or heed
Do not break down on the prairie
This is a living not worth selling
Parts to keep it all running

© Ginny Stanford