Poetry , Art & Video by Norman J. Olson
I remember how the fields
of oats would
roll in waves
on a windy day,
like waves on the ocean that I had never seen… how
the sun was hot on dust
packed by the alternating vee of
tread marks from the huge
driving wheels of the tractor… the smoothness
of the packed dirt like
some ultra-silk spun from
loam and
cosmic fire…
I remember black and red chickens scratching in the gravel
I remember the hay barn
with space between the vertical boards
where rows of sunlight
brought motes
of dust into visibility, slicing
through the
gloom… old hay soft underfoot
and rough hewn
beams notched and assembled
up to the roof
unimaginably distant
to my young
blue
eyes
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the last horse and the tractor
the old John Deere tractor
was bought just after the war… I can
barely remember the last of the horses,
huge and stomping around,
led by harness reins…
these were not race horses or
riding horses, delicate as the frost, but
workhorses with hooves the size of
dinner plates… and shaggy coats…
I can see my dad
with the horse hoof held between
his legs, nails in his mouth,
nailing horseshoes
to the hooves of
a big slow black workhorse…
the last horse was named Black Beauty and I remember his death
the horse was ill and was standing,
leaning against the chicken coop…
I could hear the cracking
and groaning of the wood…
it was blue black night and
the enormous old horse
was
screaming in a harrowing whinny,
almost like a person… the
adults were afraid he was
going to knock the
chicken coop over… I remember
my dad at the old wooden
phone that hung on the kitchen wall, cranking
up the phone, holding
the ear piece…
calling
cousin Erik
to come with his rifle
and I remember the
crack of the shot… then
the last of the horses
was gone… gone like childhood
or like yesterday morning, gone
like the sound
of an old John Deere tractor
sputtering
over the hills of my memory, gone
like a rifle shot
in the blue black night…
See more at http://www.normanjolson.com/
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