The Pastoral of My Own Town
(with many thanks to Ken Irby)
or rather,
between two:
one north
(home)
one south
(work)
between them
daily, twice
I fly, or
sometimes
linger
like today:
this cool
morning,
clearing
from a
cold spring
night,
two deer
winter
largeness
still about
them, haunch,
shank & torso
leaping
west to east
across a
quiet highway
or yesterday
after a long
build-up &
short storm,
a saintly
blue heron
near the pond
nearly hidden,
rising, bent
legged &
angled wing
up & north
to some day’s
nesting place
or, two days
before that,
this time
homeward,
with windows
lowered to
soak a smell
that is
a distillation
of April
promises:
grass clippings,
coming rain,
wind, & all
the piling shit
of spring
& three
spiraling turkey
vultures trying
to ruin it,
unsuccessfully
but most
or all of this
will fade
& soon,
even that
collected here
is already
vanished
or never was:
memory, a
palimpsest
of days
partially
removed,
scraped,
erased,
or cleaned
imperfectly,
being an
incomplete
chart of days,
drives &
dependencies:
what gets us
through each
day, from
one place
to the other,
through
one pasture
to another,
are those
gentle,
passing
thoughts
that correspond
to the space
between
a life lived
& one still
to come.
________________________________
The title of this poem comes from a poem by Ken Irby from 1964, republished in his Collected Poems last December. Ken is a great man and a fine poet. He was my professor in two American poetry courses at KU and was on my M.A. committee. He is an amazing storyteller whose knowledge of literature, language, music, and cultural history are unparalleled by anyone else I've met. He has recently been awarded the Shelley Memorial Award by the Society of American Poets, a very big deal for a poet who has been too much neglected by mainstream American poetry for too long. The above poem was inspired by a short section from a longer poem named after the Carter Family song, "It Takes a Worried Man to Sing a Wearied Song". That section is quoted (from The Intent On) below:
Please consider looking at and/or listening to some of Ken's work. You can start with the links below:
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