This Sundays work of poetry is from a writer located in my neck of the woods or at least close by it. Charlie Smith is a farmer/poet whose works are found in a series of collection and has been featured on CBC radio throughout Canada. Anyway I have read almost all of his works and he definitely adds a different voice to the poetry landscape. Here is one of his works:
Resurrection
I am writing a poem in the taggy old field:
Turn down the alders and grin —
When was the last time it sang of its yield?
The spruce whisper, “Long has it bin;
Long as a lifetime, long as a log,
Many a winter did nest.”
But I plow down the poplar, the chokecherry bush,
The whispering spruce and the rest.
I find the old furrows and strike out anew;
I sing to the red diesel roar,
And the field heaves her bosom and flexes her arms,
And the sod on the mull-boards says, “More!”
I am writing a poem and my black lines are straight,
A rhyme that a dead man can see;
And he circles the edges just out of my sight,
And he whispers “Oh, thank you!” to me;
“Long was she fallow and ruin, my love,
Long lay my pretty, despair.”
He reflects on my mull-boards each time I go round —
You can’t see him quite, but he’s there.
I am the savior of land gone to brush;
I am the rod and the way.
And of all of the poems I’ve written so far —
The plow wrote my favorite today.
©Charlie Smith
You can find more of his work at “Your Scrivener Press“. Take care.
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thank you! it brought me right back to ontario. there’s an earthy, ruddy magic to that land, and i could almost smell it, reading this …