POEMS
Little Puddles, Spring Buckets, the Earth Awash
by Kevin Stein
In March, where the Kickapoo Bends
by Kevin Stein
"I hope I die before I get old." -- The Who
Three of us walked, though that was hardly all,
down white-tail path through bracken wood,
oak and hickory, track of elms disease
had wracked and left to stand, bark peeling
from wood the color of bone, all home
for woodpecker and then sweet fodder
for morel. Three of us walked, though that
was hardly all, down past a rusting wood stove,
bright heaps of glass and stone, the lone
jack-in-the-pulpit rising like sex after sixty.
Three of us walked -- one who'd patched his marriage,
one who'd found a job, one whose wife and son
had slipped cancer's grip -- down through damp
folds of Solomon's seal, both false and real,
through May Apple's raised umbrellas
and multiflora rose someone's good intentions
had made tangled pest, down to the Kickapoo bend,
a bluff of osage-orange, down where blue bells
carried sky to water and our steps flushed
doves whose wings burst feathered laughter.
We gave thanks. Bells rang silent blue, blue --
warm beer as explosive as middle-age
we once blithely swore we'd never reach.
The Great Blue
by James Ballowe
-- for Ruth
On the morning the great blue heron flew upstream
and you weren't there to see him rise unsteadily
then glean grace from a single determined flap
of his enormous wings, lifting at once
an angular neck and legs like pendant jade
in undulating flight within the shadowed
hush of redbud, shadblow, and just-leaved maple,
I knew then how with this bird
you would identify as if in that great
fowl's flight you'd found your spirit's place
after a life of haunting river banks
from which so much that once was free has gone.
County Farm Road
by James Ballowe
Beneath the bridge on Indian Creek children
angle for stunted fish, a heron feeds,
a muskrat plies the water when it's up.
Fields tilled to the road, winter winds
loam ditches and neighbors' stalked land.
Upon a hill the abandoned county farm
hints of loss. House filled with straw,
rotting barn, squarish, vacant shack
for vagrants who got sick and came to die.
The cemetery lies just down the way,
stones like school children's tablets numbered,
but for Miles, Ruphas, Jennie, and Unknown.
In spring, just here, come pussy toes,
dog-toothed violets, and hoary puccoon.
east in mclean county
by John Knoepfle
this is a country of moraines
old prairie could have
gone on forever
mounds timbers points
groves islands savannas
a language of prairies
farmhouses on the high places
barns outbuildings
washed in the clear air
corn fields and soybean
enough for everyone
east of ellsworth
an osage orange hedge
stiffens the curve of the earth
four crows carry the sky away cawing
primroses and meadowlark eggs
by John Knoepfle
they come from their
timeless periods the indian
paintbrush the plaintain in a monthly
halo where no voice
has been lost in the western
maytime of dropseed
and meadowlark eggs
hidden in the brave wind
larkspur wild strawberry
a voice talking in the womb
of the primrose a catalogue
of ravaging
sweetheart the box
terrapin the regal fritillary
blues that distill the eye
you are drawn through these veins
so natural the cottonwoods
echo in the wind the voice
saying who you are
all shadows pale greens
the sharp reds in spangles
JUST OFF THE ST. FRANCIS BLACKTOP
MCDONOUGH COUNTY, ILLINOIS
FEBRUARY 2, 1996
SUNDOWN
by Forrest Robinson
Eleven degrees below and clear blue sky
guaranteed groundhog shadows all across
prairie far as you can squint; your breath
explosive clouds suffering almost long
as souls could hope before silos, windmills,
spires pierced heaven out there among the creak
of wagons, clanking pans and pots, the steamy backs
of oxen, horses. Day like this, what mustard seed
of hope glowed like a coal within the dark
behind their eyes, the weight of so much blank
blue falling--crushed grass frozen rut lines
inviting backward glances of despair?
Out here,
the heater roars above my truck, idle on
this country road; and I, chores done, slide back
and take it all in as though for the first time--
three miles off, the chimney smoke, the lights
of our house sparkling stars clustered in thorns.
WESTERN ILLINOIS COUNTRY
by Forrest Robinson
This is the land of the dropping sky
where stars sparkle flat out east and west,
north and south, where you ride at night
on top of the world; and dawn sets fire
to waterbeads along roadsides, cornstalks
spider-webby and silver in the fields, running
forever. No one growing up in hills can know
the origin of thunderclouds, the slow demise
of days in blinding, pink haze or clear azure,
fielding that single star we realize is meant
for us--fresh hope rising like a church spire,
watchful as a windmill waiting for wind.
This land, flat and haunted by wagon wheels,
washes into the soul like an inland sea,
its tide singing in the summer night air,
calling us on our passage home.
AT SUNSET ON THE PRAIRIE
by David Etter
At sunset on the prairie,
great cornfields climb to the sky.
My sunburned arms are sticky with sweat
and sprinkled with pollen.
There are sad mouths in the shadows
that hunger to be kissed.
I watch the last streaks of pink light
fade beyond the water tower.
In the kitchen of tall windows
a moon girl sings my name.
Oh what dark secrets I have gathered
to amaze her flashing eyes.
UP THE ILLINOIS RIVER
by David Etter
Ragged leaves and cigar wrappers
scurry across the beaten grass.
The river waters my dusty eyes.
Stray-dog sunlight tongues a pale petal
that is shaped like a gambler's hand.
Thunder booms in the west
and all the sailing clouds come home.
Drops of rain fall, big as walnuts.
Ghosts of drowned deckhands
talk about coal and jinxed towboats,
then lie back, quiet, exhausted
in their castles of catfish.
Off to the south, a feather of smoke.
An Illini girl burns her wedding dress.
Twilight comes, slime-green and eerie.
Now the air is soft, belly smooth.
The boy who moves out of the lamplight
has a guitar as big as God.
If he plunks just one taut string,
I will explode a thousand images.
Another Version
by Lisel Mueller
Our trees are aspens, but people
mistake them for birches;
they think of us as characters
in a Russian novel, Kitty and Levin
living contentedly in the country.
Our friends from the city watch the birds
and rabbits feeding together
on top of the deep, white snow.
(We have Russian winters in Illinois,
but no sleighbells, possums instead of wolves,
no trusted servants to do our work.)
As in a Russian play, an old man
lives in our house, he is my father;
he lets go of life in such slow motion,
year after year, that the grief
is stuck inside me, a poisoned apple
that won't go up or down.
But like the three sisters, we rarely speak
of what keeps us awake at night;
like them, we complain about things
that don't really matter and talk
of our pleasures and of the future:
we tell each other the willows
are early this year, hazy with green.
SCENIC ROUTE
by Lisel Mueller
For Lucy, who called them "ghost houses."
Someone was always leaving
and never coming back.
The wooden houses wait like old wives
along this road; they are everywhere,
abandoned, leaning, turning gray.
Someone always traded
the lonely beauty
of hemlock and stony lakeshore
for survival, packed up his life
and drove off to the city.
In the yards the apple trees
keep hanging on, but the fruit
grows smaller year by year.
When we come this way again
the trees will have gone wild,
the houses collapsed, not even worth
the human act of breaking in.
Fields will have taken over.
What we will recognize
is the wind, the same fierce wind,
which has no history.
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1997
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