Farmland
David J Walker
I am
The dreamland
Of the farm
The zauberhaft/magic-craft
Found in the brown dirt
Beneath the feats
of farmers
I am
The farmhand of
The sacred farmland
Often found
Ground into dust and
Blown by the wind
Into the next county
I am the dirt ground into grime
and found
beneath the fingernails
of farmers
having coffee
in town
at the corner
coffee shop
eating eggs and
smoking unfiltered cigarettes
I am the pungent perfume
Of turned earth
Wetted with moisture of
Morning dew
The balm that soothes and heals
the sunbaked brown skin of the earth
I am packed caleche printed in
Tire track dirt road ruts
That leads farm families from
Rural isolation to
Civilization
Covered in asphalt & concrete
I am the mound
Covering the graves
Of long-gone farmers
That Jesus saves
For Himself
Categories:
caleche, allegory, farm,
Form: Rhyme
Trapped in the Grapes of Wrath
David J Walker
The earth tones owned
By the caleche road lined
With drying careless weeds
Leading to the highway
and the unknown future written
In the sky, I
No, we
may escape the dying
Farmhouse framed in a past
Not coming back
Father
As it shrinks further from you
Farther away from your point of view
And your new family
Not trapped with the Joad’s
In the Grapes of Wrath
The caleche road was only
A path
Categories:
caleche, allegory,
Form: Rhyme
FREEZE - FRAME OF QUEBEC CITY
Time-capsule towers over St. Lawrence:
Heights of Abraham look imperiously down
On the Ile d’Orleans spread over the river,
Chateau Frontenac’s fairytale frivolous turrets,
Le Parlement’s serious severity,
Antique town with narrow cobbled streets,
Overhanging shoulders of timbered gables.
Clipclop of caleche leaps back centuries,
Cobblestones echo concertina and fiddle music
About log-driving men with peavey poles.
L’ete indien - a world of rust and copper leaf,
Montmorency Falls and the legend,
All frozen in time and in winter’s snowy grip.
Categories:
caleche, urban
Form: Imagism