Completing the Field, and: Cynosures, and: Practice

THREE POEMS BY ANDERSON DOUGLAS COMPLETING THE FIELD This is the second summer our neighbor has Come to furrow the field with his old tractor. His task to sow, ours the strange shapes Of responsibility. These figures carved My family. This time, the seed takes hold And grass bends toward us in new life, Soft in the crackly shininess of August. The farmer takes his due, the strange shapes Settle on the mild green acre in figures Of castastrophe and repose. At times Mindless days were surprised by insight— Not the blunt punishing glares from father Or mother, but the deep swell of earth-bone Under Kentucky clay. I starved the heart early. There is a price to pay for not caring: no past. We completed the field in pine and oak, Rain dropping through leaves, cutting boughs For the dark season. These measures of time Taught me time. I learned the weight Of my body. Years later we moved. We sold The house at a loss. Another family Came to own my room. I imagined them Carelessly wrecking the years I kept there, Laughing at the small secrets I discovered In the hall mirror. Once, I returned With the woman I was going to marry, Saying, See, ¡grew up there. The field Opened, the grass moved toward my words. 52 CYNOSURES Somewhere a phone is ringing in the dark, A voice is waiting to listen hello, hello. Shadow arises from the somber gray As sun sweeps down my sloping spine. Pencil is ready to stain the white. An ant tracks across a line of verse. The poem, restless, is going home. A leaf fails in early June and falls. Water runs up the tree in rivers. The ant has paused on the word hue. The phone is ringing through the dark While voice patiently dies and dies. Shadow amuses light as wind weaves the two. And bloodstains corrupt the endless white With sounds of river inside the tree That flow to the failing leaf that falls On the startled ant who stands on love. Somber shadows of spine come down, The ant carries off leaf and light While the poem, gone home, carries on. Across the white voice calls: hello, hello PRACTICE I am learning to play the heart like a guitarEmpty , it makes its beautiful music. Fingers thread across the stringsSurgeon sewing still a wound, Sister knitting afghan after afghan, Ladies jabbering over autumn quilts, Looms weaving white air fine as cambric wings— The song is resonant, The song is exactly where it's going. Anderson Douglas is scheduled to graduate from the University of Kentucky Medical School at Lexington this year. 53 ?\-·^ '4 ¦¦ : ä«" '.> ·.'<.', \ *-'Mw The artist chooses what is best to serve his purpose. The painter need not copy nature, for he selects the best in a landscape, leaving out an abundance of detail, perhaps, to achieve an effect. (The Pattern of Life) 54 ...