sw00174p-poem6s2

Postures 2007:  #6 from Side Two



"Tobin"

  [ Someone had said the poppies were falling
    when the news came, and so was it remembered. ]


"Here, we are what we make and what makes us",
the old man says; but Jeremy, my son,
I am not sure.  Each day we weed his rows,
slicing the quack and dandelion roots
or lifting the shallower roots of pigweed
and thistles, breaking clods; and--turning brown,
I wonder more.  I feel less near to this.
I am not concerned/ with carrots and beets,
potatoes, cabbages, cauliflower.
Each day we weed his rows.  I don't know.
The summers seem to grow in length to me;
I feel the earth has withered, become bland.
All the patient excitement disappears.
The rain, the sun, the life, the rising green
are only/ happenings now: morbid facts
to measure passings.  You see these fingers?
I used to boast of them, but something's changed:
my body aches, and it shrivels my heart.

   But what of the old man?  He is happy.

Oh yes, and I am not so old or weak.
But he is settled in his place, secure,
the way a gardened flower is, a star.
He can rest until he dies, but Tobin
remains and hoes.  I know, my son, I know
you would work, would care for your father.  Yes.
I would be happy, perhaps.  But what use?
All my life I have sweated on the land:
cleaned it, groomed it, fortified it; and now--
what good?!  A broken horse is shot; a weed
is tossed into some pile for burning.  So,
"we are what we make".  Have I done poorly?
Has all my quiet work been senseless, wrong?

   No, father.  Besides, it does not matter
   what the old man says.  We do what we can."

Yes, Jeremy, but how could I accept
(or ever be content with) a rocking chair
while life persists in these two legs, though strength
seeps out.  I'd flounder, fume, would not sit down--
unless to die.  It is a war in me.
You understand.  I could not gracefully age,
not knowing what I know.  The loneliness
would tear into me like a rifle shell.
You see the poppies, Jeremy, the poppies--





-------
Brian A. J. Salchert