The Middlewesterner

LINES FOR OCTOBER 31

Sweet as a rose,
it lifts, then,
the day –

opening.

LINES FOR OCTOBER 30

Wet horses
this morning,

standing tail
to the rain.

LINES FOR OCTOBER 29

Like a scar,
the distance.

LINES FOR OCTOBER 28

Morning
releases

silence.
The birds

break loose.
You'd think

coffee
would be

enough.

LINES FOR OCTOBER 27

Sheen of moisture
on the road,

the slick sky's
shine.

LINES FOR OCTOBER 26

Like sorrow –
the silence.

LINES FOR OCTOBER 24

Grey day.
Blue door

in the rain.

LINES FOR OCTOBER 23

Wet crows
flying

the way
the rain

insists.

LINES FOR OCTOBER 22

A grey
sky, thick

enough
to lick.

LINES FOR OCTOBER 21

All the birds
on a single wire -

who decides?

LINES FOR OCTOBER 20

At daybreak
the smell of
smoke, as if

the world burns.

LINES FOR OCTOBER 14

Rain, like a
mis-

understanding
between

friends.

LINES FOR OCTOBER 16

leap-

frog the first
word

and stick
your

landing.

LINES FOR OCTOBER 15

How many words, how many

im-

possible combinations?

LINES FOR OCTOBER 14

What
does the day
defend; and

what
gets left
behind?

LINES FOR OCTOBER 13

Slow
wind and

sloppy
sky -

five
sandhill

cranes
fly

low.

LINES FOR OCTOBER 10

Today's
lick of
rain comes

too late –

even
God is
thirsty.

LINES FOR OCTOBER 9

Rain today
for the blessed
and the faithless,

and not for
one more and
the other less.

LINES FOR OCTOBER 8

Some days
the bright
play of

bird song
against
the edge

of night.
Some days
only

silence.

LINES FOR OCTOBER 7

Dust.

The earth
makes us

hers.

LINES FOR OCTOBER 6

Time. Rust.
The pull

of dust.
Ashes

such as
us.

LINES FOR OCTOBER 3

All day
the hang

of cloud,
spit of

rain, black
bell of

silence.

LINES FOR OCTOBER 2

A seed splits.
Something lives.

Something dies.
A child is born.

We bury grandpa.
Life goes on.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL
OCTOBER 3, 2002

I am a "retired" man today. I have stepped out of a career in printing after 24 years. I turned 55 at the end of August. I have gathered in recent years a big passel of Ben Zen poems; half a book of poems for Plain Poems: A Fairwater Daybook; a memoir, Curlew:Home, published last year; Kissing Poetry's Sister, published yesterday; and a big book of unpublished essays I call The Idea of the Local. I am embarked upon a new adventure: "Vagabond in the Middle: An Expedition into the Heart of the Middle West." I have since December 1997 kept this "Morning Drive Journal," a journal of place - this place - the ten miles between here and where I worked. Now that I don't go to work at the Printers anymore, I no longer have the morning drive as an excuse for meditation. Yet I wish to continue these notations. Necessarily they shall take a different shape, another course. I think I shall focus not so much on this place, but on places - across the middle west as I travel hereabouts, or wherever M. and I happen to set ourselves down for a little exploration. I must pull myself to this task religiously. Without the discipline of a job to go off to, it would be so easy to let this slip. As soon as I start skipping days, I'm doomed. The real secret of this journal is the space it creates for something to happen. Certainly there is no guarantee that something will happen simply because I'm here with pen in hand; but I can be pretty sure nothing will happen if I'm not here making the effort. Over the nearly five years I've been doing this drive journal I've been amazed time and again at what surfaces, at what shines and sparkles on a day I thought I had nothing to give. It is simply the enforcement of this time, this blank space in front of me, that has made these surprises possible.

So let this be a promise to myself that my journal of place shall continue! I so promise, here and now, on the first day of my retirement, the first day of the rest of my life.

I am interested in the landscape, the people, our history. I am interested in what we are here, what we were, what we shall be. I want to record the truth of it before the truth of it is lost. We are a common people, ordinary folk, and most might wonder whatever is there to write about that anyone would be interested in, whatever is special enough to be set down for remembering. Here in the middle part of the country, we aren't the glamorous people that draw attention; we aren't the great movers and shakes of entertainment and art and literature; we don't stand at the center of the financial universe or the world of high culture. We are ordinary farmers and factory workers and owners of small businesses; government employees and teachers and cops. We stand with one foot in the past - we know it - and one foot in the future. We are generally not quick to brag or draw attention to ourselves. We seldom make a big scene, we just put our shoulder into it and do what we have to do.

The land here is not as remarkable as mountains; we don't have the loveliness of ocean. It is seldom desert here, more often it's fruitful beyond imagining. Pretty much the land is flat and straightforward, as honest as most of us are. There is not so much hidden in the landscape, and not so much hidden in our lives. We have sky, but we don't have "big sky." Mostly the land is farmland, not wasteland; something useful, not just something pretty. We haven't come to talk about the plow, we've come to plow. The land demands our attention, yes - even those who work in the factory depend to some extent on the farm economy, I think, or at least on the farm culture. Yet perhaps the land still would be fruitful left to itself, for its a mighty fecund piece of ground we're set down upon.

So I've started the journey already - I've started recording thoughts of place here in these pages. Let it continue tomorrow. Let today be my everyday into a far-flung future.

THE END

LINES FOR OCTOBER 1

Light on the water –
sudden surprise of sky.

FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL
OCTOBER 2, 2002

My last day of work full-time at the Printers. After today, I'll be "retired."

It rained about 4:30 a.m. briefly. Everything is wet. The sky is grey, some black birds flying high enough to disappear into cloud.

As I head off to work for the final time, the moment holds some emotion - not sadness exactly, a soberness, a somber feeling. Something has ended. Something new has begun.

North of Fairwater, to the north lays grey Canadian sky. A crenulated sky, as if the clouds have slammed into a wall. As if the sky this morning is God's accordion and he's all set to play "The Retirement Polka."

The closer I get to work, the greyer the sky. A spit of rain increases. You'd call it a dark and dreary day if you didn't have such reason jump up and kick your heels. Say hooray! hooray! hooray!