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.”