The
late October frost melted before noon.
In
the sky, Canada geese were flying south
over
the Minnesota River Valley.
I,
armed with my plastic shotgun in the crook
of
my elbow, loaded my orange pop-gun bullets,
ready
to lose them in the cornfield forever.
We
hunters – my parents, farm neighbors,
a
banker from town who always let my parents
write
checks on future bushels, a preacher
my
father liked to unleash his minister-
in-heaven/hell
jokes on – swept our cornfields,
swamps
to scare up pheasants. That day, the sky
was
sprayed with birdshot. Later, sandwiches
and
hot chocolate, everyone smelling of gunpowder
and
feathers instead of cows, money, or a Brylcreemed
messenger
of god. Now, everyone else in the hunting
party
is long gone, faded into the dry rattle
of
cornstalks. Some things lost in the field
forever.
I walk quietly down my row of time, listen
for
the tinny cry of alarmed roosters, wings flapping
into
frosty air. Soon, they will not hear me coming.
Jari Thymian's poetry has appeared in Simply Haiku, Ekphrasis, The Christian Science Monitor, Margie Review, Broadsided Press, The Pedestal Magazine, Bijou Poetry Review, Alehouse, Chicken Pinata, and Melusine. Poems are forthcoming in Memoir (and), The Orange Room Review, Cherry Blossom Review, and the Kent State 3-year traveling art/poetry exhibit called Speak Peace. A chapbook, The Meaning of Barns, was published by Finishing Line Press, 2007. She was nominated
for a Pushcart Prize. www.jarithymian.com.
| I remember
being so excited to hunt pheasants with my parents. Very "big girl." I
didn't have a clue where this memory would take me when I started
writing. When I realized the hunting party was gone, I could see the
end coming in more ways than one. I savor the bittersweet contrast
between the youthful outlook and the older attentiveness. PS: I hardly advanced beyond the pop gun, didn't like firing real guns. |
