~DAVID BAKER~
MIDWEST: GEORGICS
1.
The wind is the
weather. The
worst will blow
off the surge in a matter
of moments—
the best is blessing, less
rain
or ruin
but no less a shock for
the suddenness.
In the time it takes the
wind to
turn, or
a voice to turn into wind,
we have
gone
from the hulking balers to
box lots
lined
on long tables, books and
bruised
silver, out-
landish toys, tools,
strange clothes,
crates of nothings.
It's a bright day in a
killer summer
and we're kicking through
a wasted
bean field,
trying to pick up, on a
slow thermal,
the near-harmonic of twin
auctioneers
setting the price for farm
things
from on high.
2.
I wish I were like the
famous poet
—disembodied, a voice out
of nowhere—
postmodern and uninvolved.
What
I am
trying to get at is a
general,
all-purpose
experience—like those
stretch
socks that fit all
sizes.
The particular
occasion is of lesser
interest
to me than the way a
happening
or
experience filters
through me.
Words flit
by with the force of fate,
missed.
A gray gull
coasts off on a costly
breeze—then
calls back
over one wing,
unintelligible
as a critic, foundling,
fond . .
. it sounds like
nobody's story in
particular.
3.
And that would be fine,
except here
we are,
come for the auction of a
neighbor's
dead
farm, flooded, snowed out,
burned
out by drought
and years of subsidy
undercosting,
another neighbor . . . in
particular:
Thom. Dawson, his wife
Rachel, their
son, Sam,
in their particular
death-throe,
blown down
utterly by their bank,
itself an
arm
of a swollen corporate
torso.
Look
at them leaning on
air. It's
worse than
a wake. The ones
being mourned
attend their
own ceremony, selling-off
goods
and souls, and three
mouths to feed.
Such pain is
serious, tangible,
unironic . .
.
4.
Look at them leaning in
plaid shirts
and boots.
Will one pair of socks
keep their
six feet dry?
Shoppers!
Friends!
Neighbors! Let us consider
the values at
hand! And
let's help our friends÷
this could happen to
you, too,
anytime.
What am I bid for—and
across
the green
back yard, cut into dumpy
subplots
by
massive four-wheelers,
rented U-Hauls,
like
an argument echoing, the
other
gaunt crier holds up a
desk lamp,
clicks it
on to prove it still works—Who'll
give me five
bucks?
They're the
gods hereabouts, who call down
the best price,
brother-barkers,
Jim-'n-I
Auctioneers (no kidding),
in much
demand.
5.
My autobiography has
never
interested me
much. Whenever
I try to think about
it, I seem
to
draw a complete blank.
The poet's sales rep:
All that is needed is
for the
reader
to be within range of
the poem
to
experience its
beneficial effects.
There floats a reek of
cattle on
a breeze
from the gone barn—lilac
and acid,
sharp
as a pinch to the nose—and
a shift
in
the cheap wind twists the
voices
about, out
of their heads,
meaningless as merchandise.
The crowd turns to vapor,
dust,
cloud. A draft
off the lake tosses a gull
like
a cup.
6.
Think of a place the
gods have forsaken
and bathe it in sunshine
and water.
That's
the fate of the farmhouse
and fields,
foreclosed
by bad fencing, big
pickups. Bad
weather,
as we say, bad as it
comes,
when what we
mean is luck, money, love:
anything
but
ash, berry, brambles, the
trash
when we've gone.
I wish we could all be
like the
poet,
out-of-body,
misrepresentative
of our bad luck and lot,
no one's
story.
But this is what it means
to have
our life.
It means wanting to fly
off on each
wind.
It means living among
neighbors
but cursing
the gods, who talk down to
us on
sheer air.
© by David Baker
