Having lived my early life on coal fields of deep
southern Illinois and the rest of it on cultivated prairie of central and northern
Illinois, I'm forever hoping to find evidence of nature untouched by humans.
But when I write about nature, human beings of the past or present insist on
being a part of the scene. On the prairie, the fact is magnified. Of all nature's
environments, the prairie is a stage on which no curtains are drawn on the human
drama. Come to think of it, even the absence of humanity in visual images of
nature implies a sentient lens. And because of this, artists have a responsibility
to both nature and to their fellow human beings for how they present nature.
I try to meet that responsibility by recording images economically, using a
language and a form sufficient only to grow poems.
- James Ballowe
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.