By
the Red Pods, Toast Brown Maul
By the red pods, toast brown maul
Out from highway on edge of woods
Runs the rim of field, farm, flat
Chiseled slow onto hill by fathers
Of fathers who felled same woods
Where dust, where diesel fume, where
Daddy directs to drive deep plows
Running burned backhand on brow
Slicing ripe earth at the edge of past
Where ax, where blisters, where pus
When there was no man greater
Than he on the bowed metal seat
Steering hip boned shapes with holes
Bored for life-size boulders marking
time
Where rocks fell in slipshod cairns
Where a sweat soaked gaze still stares
Where swollen hill sinks into shade
Mother calling, hawks twirling
In clouds only memories will paint
Above the kettle moraine
Curving Fall woods’ ripe decay
When earth in submission, oceans
Far, Father looking backward
When China was nowhere to be found
By the red pods, toast brown maul
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