Saturday, July 12, 2014

Poem I Read Yesterday Evening at King's Books

At King's books yesterday it was all-open-mike.  Next month the readings return to the format of featured reader and open-mike.  I read this poem, it has been thirty-five years since this poem was included in a chapbook from Porch publications, "The Story Makes Them Whole".  I wrote poems about a trip to Mansfield, Missouri, to see the Wilder Home and Museum. 
Chapbook from 1979
 BUS IN THE OZARKS – AUGUST

Through the wooded billows of the land
Where the cattle stood in wooded shelter
Where the cattle waded in the cow ponds,
Where the horses swept the flies from one
Another, tail to head, swept the bus.
These were the Missouri Ozarks, green
With unquenchable grass, green with windbreaks
Around each farmhouse, an occasional
Hawk of motionless wings above a barn. 

Passing the cattle truck, the bus brought
Cattle to us, neck and neck.  The cattle gazed
At us from their white faces, eyes like
Cordials of chocolate, so mild, so empty
Of understanding, so full of acceptance,
So full of our own equality. 

When it rains in the Ozarks they open
Their hearts and they say, “A nice little rain
We had, praise the Lord, it’s a blessing." 

We pass through Bolivar (rhymes with Oliver)
And the other small towns where the bus made
An elegant pause.  “The farther south
You go in the Ozarks,” said my neighbor,
“the more hilly and beautiful they are.”

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