I passed spreads of field
the places where farmers
made livings from soil.
The view enticed
but I couldn’t stop.
I couldn’t stop
but I couldn’t forget
times spent on uncle farms
before I went to college.
The morning sun shone
but memories in college
in Ames shone brighter.
There I learned
the language of love
the concepts of life
that I held in my hand.
Each book of psychology
opened worlds that lived
inside me.
I learned to see
they were always a part of me
as were aspirations and dreams.
A Grant Wood mural on a staircase
in the university library
said life began with tillage,
and from that stemmed
our crafts and arts we embraced.
Years later
when on break from work
I walked the steps
to see how the mural
survived the hands of time.
It survived as I
but I never outlived memory.
One less-travelled highway
had lost its name
but I recalled the roads
taken with college friends
as we learned to live our lives.
WINTER IN AN IOWA CORNFIELD
Why start nattering about lucky tracks
Neath a tarnished night of a waning storm?
Haystacks in a disciplined platoon wait
With hooded coats, caves of hibernation,
Standing in formation with watchfulness.
Six columns and six rows of perfection
Thirty-six baled soldiers in transition
Marching forward in a biting snow storm,
Blindly floundering in a final surge.
A good resistance fighter is lonely.*
Haystacks in the Snow, Grant Wood (1941)
* Winter in Wartime, Jan Terlouw (1972)
stoic or mourning
in a time of depression
or keepers of secrets
with a hostile divide?
why daylit drawn curtains
made from fabric she's wearing
and 'mother-in-law's tongue'
on the porch to the side?
is the pitchfork that's upright
a symbol of darkness
that's repeated in lines
on the clothes, arch and face?
a tribute to values
in eldon, iowa
or a satire in oil
of its people and place?
Iowa raised Grant Wood
painted unusual landscapes* when he could
Enigmatic& everso quirky
answers we never can see
*https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/american-gothic/5QEPm0jCc183Aw
I’d plow four rocky acres, maybe even five,
For a taste of the honey from my Honey’s hive.
No one spices the clover like my lover does
When we meet in the meadow and we buzz, buzz, buzz.
She’s a blue ribbon winner at the county show;
Sings a nice little number, ends in E-I-O.
She can flirt with the judges and they think it’s cute;
When she winks like a barn owl, they shout hoot, hoot, hoot.
Buzz, buzz, buzz, hoot, hoot, hoot.
Dance ‘round the hen house in a chicken suit.
Learn how to juggle, break an egg or two,
Then we’ll make rooster jealous when we doodle-do.
See the ducks swim in circles on the lily pond
And that one lonesome froggie in the mist beyond.
We can drop our pretensions (standing back-to-back),
Then we’ll slip in the water going quack, quack, quack.
I’m a ham-fisted farm boy, Sugar. Holy cow!
Got a stool and a bucket and I do know how.
We’ll have sweet cream and peaches once the milkin’s through,
When our lips come together and we moo, moo, moo.
Quack, quack, quack, moo, moo, moo.
Work like the devil with a pitchfork, too.
Warn all the pigeons we’ll be pitchin’ woo
When we meet in the hayloft and we coo, coo, coo.
After noticing a small white house
this painter decided that it would look
fancy if someone would live in it too
so using his sister Nan and his dentist
Dr. Byron Mckeeby this colonial print
is mimicking 19th century Americana
And to think that they were never even standing
in front of the house they had been painted separatley
Grant Wood 1930
Americian Gothic
The Art Institute Of Chicago
Entry For Brian Strand's Ekphrasis