Part Four
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A Glimmer of Silver Arms
 in the Stream
Through the whole of an autumn afternoon,
we lay at the foot of a graven stone
in the cool of a shadow and made our bed ~~
a crown of nightshade encircled her head
and the play of dappled light on her cheek
and along her throat made it hard to speak ~~
the fragrant grasses were long and unmown,
her blouse unbuttoned, her hair windblown,
and none but the cold indifferent dead
bore witness to all that was done or said.
And though half the village condemned outright
our renegade love, we savored our plight
and in murmured defiance vowed to stay
until dusk had obliterated the day ~~
the long hours passed and the last light waned,
yet still in delirium we remained,
immersed in caresses increasingly bold,
clinging to all we could never hold
until lying in ruins, at length, we slept
as high overhead the cold stars crept.
And when the last star had died with the dawn,
I awoke to find her utterly gone
except for the broken heel of a shoe
and a path her skirt had left in the dew,
a path that I followed to where there bent
a slender willow sipping the current
of old Spoon River . . , and where it wended
deep into shadow her story ended,
a glimmer of silver arms in the stream
and halos of floating hair like a dream.
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The Apostasy of Caleb Cobb
From the day the Baptist preacher got caught
consoling the knee of the deacon’s wife,
Caleb Cobb announced he wouldn’t set foot
in any church again to save his life.
He called it a matter of principle.
Sarah, his wife, concerned for his soul,
was not in the market: “Caleb, you’d use
any old thing as a lame excuse:
there’s more principle in those thieving crows
that pillage my pies!” Caleb looked morose.
In the end what it boiled down to was that
Caleb didn’t care to be shouted at,
not if he couldn’t at least shout back,
for Caleb had not acquired the knack
of taking chastisement with Christian grace:
the sight of a sanctimonious face
haranging at him from on high was more
than Caleb felt called upon to endure.
Sarah spoke gravely of the sin of pride.
Caleb’s jaw turned to granite. Sarah cried
(to little effect), then issued a flat
ultimatum. Caleb put on his hat
and, struggling to master a slow burn,
strode in stormy silence out to the barn.
Sarah remained resolute on the porch
and watched him go. She went off to church
alone and unattended that Sabbath morn.
Caleb for his part cultivated corn.
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Proprietress of the Party Line
It wasn’t so much that she listened in
on our every call, it was that she took
not the slightest trouble to mask the din
and clatter of pots and pans as she cooked,
or bothered to set the receiver down
as she bellowed out the door to her boys
or cursed a pig off the porch. All the town
had to talk above or around the noise
of Lucinda’s chaotic life, and yet,
we’d not have embarrassed her on a bet
by letting her know we knew she was there ~
the dullness and drill of her daily fare
had left her, like most of us, deadly bored;
whenever she blew off steam, we just paused
and held our tongues till the turmoil passed:
we wouldn’t want her to miss a word.
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Will Jenkins
On the humid July afternoon his daughter
was married, Will Jenkins refused to set foot
in the church but planted himself in the shade
of an old sycamore, just stood out there
for the sake of catching the odd little breeze.
He never could take the heat.
And if
he missed the sight of his only daughter
standing in veils of white at the altar,
at least through the half-open window he
could hear every wheezing note of the organ
and something of what the minister said.
Somehow he thought that no one would notice
his empty place in the pew, yet every
last soul in the congregation saw him
standing beneath that tree and they whispered
he never could take the heat, and mostly
they smiled and made a point of taking
no notice, and even his daughter smiled
when she happened to glance outside and saw him
fanning himself with his hat.
And later,
after the ceremony was ended
and everyone in the church had sought out
the cool of the shade, not a single person
alluded to how old Will had contrived
to miss his own daughter's wedding.
But Nora,
long-suffering Nora, the stoical wife
who had somehow endured him all these years,
gave Will such a look as she stepped from the church
that he felt it like a punch to the gut
and he pushed aside his fork and his plate
with its uneaten slab of wedding cake
and sat there staring, not even troubling
to shoo off the worrisome fly that lit
at the very top of his balding head.
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The Harvest
Toward evening they found him out in the field
behind the tractor, lying face down.
The husking-bed of the cornpicker held
a mangled glove, but no blood or bone.
His hand was intact.
They puzzled it out.
Something, most likely a stalk, had jammed
the snapping rolls. As he freed them, they caught
a finger, ripped the glove from his hand,
and gave him so unexpected a shock
he dropped on the spot from a heart-attack.
They laid him out in the bed of the truck
and ferried him home.
As they neared the yard,
she stepped from the doorway, twisting a lock
of hair round her finger, staring hard.
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Hanging out the Wash
in the Midst of Fall Plowing
The sight of billowing sheets in the wind
caused something to break in the little child,
not only because, like anything wild,
they wrangled and whipped but because their fall
and lift afforded glimpses of all
the impending darkness that lay beyond:
the sinister acres of cloven land,
the miles of merciless black without end.
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The Prodigal
In the end the thing that disturbed him most,
the thing he remembered most through the years,
was when he returned to the family place,
to the hard unforgiving acres where
his father still farmed, and recalled again
the inherent knowledge he once possessed
simply by being his father's son--
a knowledge foregone, consigned to the past,
till he saw it rise up in his father's face
as a look of reproach: that nothing gained
by talking has worth, that cattle and land
are the only wealth befitting a man,
that a landless man is like Adam cast
from the Garden, shamed, and forever lost.
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The Exile
On the winter morning that they were wed,
she made of her husband a sole request:
that before old age should overtake them,
habits harden and joints be possessed
by infirmity, they would move to town.
The thought of a widowhood spent alone
amid all that silence filled her with dread
and she begged his promise. He nodded once
in cautious accord. Now, fifty years hence,
she lives contented with neighbors at hand
and a house she can manage. As for him,
he stands at the window in reverie
as though in the empty street he can see
acres and acres of newly-plowed land.
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