A Meditation on the Land—remembering a farm foreclosure.For Darrell Ringer, 1953-93
“Thank you,” he said, while the black eyesdrilled from the shadow of his ballcapas we stood in the sunbaked squareof a Kansas town where we’d just ralliedagainst such business as no one with honorshould dare to defend—then droveover pocked macadam, between shoulderscascading with purple wild flowers, wheatturning green to gold—the field after field,the rich carpet called forth, turned over,culled with such care that I, for one,don’t have blisters enough to imagine—and beneath it the black earth seetheswith world-feeding life. Then we arrivedat his farm. Beautiful, I’d often thought,this life, how the green soybean hugat the earth and alfalfa explodes into pinkand animals trudge toward us in the slow-motion rhythm of paddock-bound shadowsuntil their heads hike up with quick interestwhen haybales are pitched with a thudbetween the tarnished steel rails of the crib.But the earth and its moods are uncertain,despite the disconsolate pleading it getswhen sleep doesn’t come, that a stormplease pass by without flooding at harvest;that a drought not set in, the wind not whisktopsoil to a powder-dry ash floating offin a glitter-filled cloud to the redof a summer-long sun. And of coursewords are addressed to the Notice of Debtthat’s attached like a leech to the title,which is after all a mere sheet of paperapproved by the courts but withoutthe least smell of wet dirt to grace it.And of all he foresaw or was faced with,what he couldn’t agree to was losing this landwithout even a fight. They might take it all,but the fight, at least—they couldn’t take that.
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David’s latest collection, The Green Vault Heist, was published in 2023 by Cornerstone Press and is available here.
(Photo: United Soybean Board/flickr.com/ CC BY 2.0)
David Salner’s Summer Words: New and Selected Poems appeared in March 2023 from Broadstone Books and his sixth collection, The Green Vault Heist, in September. Salner’s debut novel, A Place to Hide, won first place for 1900s historical fiction from Next Generation Indie Book Awards. He’s worked as iron ore miner, steelworker, librarian, baseball usher, and in many other trades. For more https://DSalner.wixsite.com/salner Latest posts by David Salner (see all)
