He should have been a farmer

Oct 14, 2008 - 18:02 PM PST

I believe he knew that road,
its secret bend marked by the dogwood's splay,
where gravel spilt from the switch-backed path
leading past Holland Lake,
lit as the east line cracked
over a midwestern field.

I would have followed
bare-faced along the march to lonely work,
singing to the tap rumble
of mule clop and plow,
dotted with our proud exhales,
such man-boom falsetto, if it was our music.

Our hands, mine splintered, would call for
the sting of spade-head on rock.
To absorb that tremor,
to know someday we will reep,
we will bath
in the noon-time summer wheat.

In hope, standing as the sun-clocked
day burns below the west rimmed road,
I would set my eyes to his,
in a finer salute, mud spangled finger
poised on a workman's brow, still and silent
as men, casting ancestor shadows.

-- a rework of multiple pieces smd 2008