Kansas Farmer

Kansas Farmer "In good years it's so good you don't want to leave; in bad years it's so bad you can't." This year it's good. The rains come early and settle in. All summer long a heavy sky. Who remembers the man who wrote his name in blood on parchment land ? What matters when the sky is full ? The cow bags sway like time that's standing still. The oak trees shade the earth worms and their world softens like the sky. You soften too and you don't care when alfalfa thickens to a bed so soft it asks your teenage son to love his neighbor. (Look at the farmer's hands! His muddy fingerprints are contoured fields! His eyes are like the sky and, looking down, he thinks these hands are God's.) Rapture fills the creek in good years. The creek flows through your veins. You dream of flying and live believing there's nothing in the world that can't be blessed. You bless the sky and every furrow, soil or flesh. The thick air's full of lust. You bless the water and the sun. Listen—on warm nights you can hear the green corn grow, the top leaves moving faster than the çninute-hand on your watch. What's time in good years ? October, and you stack the dead corn high in yellow pyramids, your testament to sky and green. Already next year's dust starts to color all you've done. # # # # The bad year opens with a smile. More birds than ever stop to taste your soil. You taste it too, first with fingers, then your tongue. It's spring. Your joyful body aches from making ready. The dawns are huge and red. What do the morning glories say when they quiver near the fence? You bare your nostrils to all that's going on and smell the sweet perfume of something false. The steady cows come home with no dew on their backs. Fear rises in your groin. You plant your seed and call it faith. The summer sun burns low, the earth pulls tight. The dry air smells so clean you sniff yourself remembering the scent of semen in sweetclover after rain. Now the hot south wind comes whoring through your fields. The tenderest crops are first to go. Enormous locusts perch midair against the sun. The wheat gets rusty—it paints your hands in dry-blood dust. You curse the sky and dream of fire. Fire it is in bad years. The August clouds of dust fill your barns like smoke. Horse nettle lives on along the dry-bed creeks and burns your wrists. The wasps form packs of hate. The whole world stings. You clean your throat and spit wet earth back against the burnished sky. Now is the time to find the deepest river of your soul. You sit down on the porch, close your eyes, and dig. JIM HEYNEN Jim Heynen's second collection of poems entitled Notes From Custer will be published this year. "Kansas Farmer" is a selection from his next book, Morning Chores. ...