My mother’s a stranger to me
in the country
and I’m a stranger
in my mother’s country
A city kid in penny loafers,
I stumble through meadow grass,
dodge the buzz of dragonfly
off cattail
All year long
she doesn’t say much,
but on a Missouri highway,
past framed fields
and sagging fruit stands,
she points and calls them out,
“Soybeans! Alfalfa!
Kaffercorn! Spring clover!”
She catalogues
Uncle Harry’s place
with a twisted stick:
storm cellar, feed bin,
boysenberry patch, poison oak,
hedge apple grove
In the land of fodder
and new milk
she still climbs fences
Marie, she’s called down here,
slicing ham in a farmhouse kitchen
full of aunts and uncles
so pruned in the face
you can’t tell man from woman;
Marie, who lives in town now,
knows when to plant,
when to pick,
how to stomp rabbits from brush piles,
why store eggs have gone pale
After dishes,
she walks alone
in a barnyard of banty hens
and tractor ruts
past a shattered hot chute
she once named Corn Cob Trail,
pokes a turkey feather into a cob,
tosses it high,
watches it spin, spin down
Heading back,
we stop by Uncle Ray’s.
I see her there in her country,
the girl, again the girl,
hair black as shade,
leaning over a natural spring well:
When the ladle dips,
tiny fish scatter
in the pupils of her eyes