HARVEST, NEW STYLE
by Phil Hey
This last year’s was different, in a way.
While we were getting the combine ready,
the old man looked up and made a remark
as to how it just didn’t seem right anymore
to go back and forth across the field
the same as he’d done for forty years,
and the field ought to know better by now.
And how this year he was going to stand
in the middle of the field and let the corn
come to him. And so he said, and so he did.
He just walked off to the near field,
chose his spot, and began to tell that corn
to be about its business. Now, we knew
from before, it wouldn’t be a lot of use to reason
with him, and it wasn’t. He kept on regardless.
We couldn’t help but listen, of course, considering
how good a farmer he’d been up to that point.
It seemed only right to let him go on, then,
and keep that particular field to himself.
At the end of the season, when all the rest
of us had our corn in the bin — but were dogtired
from it as usual — we had to admit
he’d gotten his speeches down pretty well.
Eloquent, you might say, though we couldn’t see
that any of the corn had moved. Still,
listening there, if you let yourself go a little,
you could almost get convinced he was right.
That corn should have had the good sense
to come when it was called.
Phil Hey is the author of How It Seems To Me: New & Selected Poems (MWPH Books, 2004; available from Tom Montag, PO Box 8, Fairwater, WI 53931 for $12.50 + $2 s&h). He has been writing and teaching at Briar Cliff University since 1969, and he is now a professor in the English/Writing Department. He received a B.A. in English at Monmouth College in 1964 and an M.F.A. at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop in 1966. He also studied creative writing under Gwendolyn Brooks at the University of Wisconsin. In 1992 he won Briar Cliff's Duff Award for the Pursuit of Excellence, and in 1998 he was given the Literacy Award for college English teachers by the Iowa Council of Teachers of English and Language Arts. Published in numerous magazines and anthologies, Phil has several earlier collections of poetry: In Plain Sight, Reorganizing the Stars, Plain Label Poems, A Change of Clothes, Ballads & Songs. His poem "Route 39 south of Pittsville" won a Rainmaker Award from Zone 3 magazine. He has also received a dozen commissions for poems, most recently from the Sisters of St. Francis in Dubuque. As an editor, Phil has co-edited the Iowa Poets series with Zachary Pearce of Pterodactyl Press, including Michael Carey's The Noise the Earth Makes, Ann Struthers' Stoneboat, and James Hearst's posthumous A Country Man. He also edits for Celestial Light Press and The Briar Cliff Review, Briar Cliff's national prize-winning magazine of writing and art. He assisted Michael Carey in the editing of Voices on the Landscape: Contemporary Iowa Poets (Loess Hills Books).
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A NOTE TO THE POETS OUT THERE
I'm interested in considering your "poems of place" for publication in The Middlewesterner's "Saturday's Poem" feature; send two or three of your best in the body of an e-mail addressed to [email protected] . Put "Saturday's Poem" in the subject line. Then be patient. I will get back to you about whether I'll use your work or not. Send along a short biographical note and information about where your books can be purchased and I'll include that when your poem runs. There's no payment involved for having your work appear in "Saturday's Poem," but the feature is seen by some few high class readers. Click here for complete index of and access to "Saturday's Poems" poems published prior to September 18, 2004.
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