Nothin' Goin' But Corn Growin'...

 

Author	Date Entered/Modified	Views
Daniel A. Stafford	4/6/2002 4:39:45 AM 10/8/2022 9:58:36 AM	619

Nothin' Goin' But Corn Growin':

Charlotte, Honey,
You remember back in '59,
Adelle graduated,
Went to Prom,
Down at old Descatil High?
I think a board popped loose,
On the barn that day.
Aaron, Sweetheart,
I remember like it was yesterday.
Charlotte, Honey,
You remember back in '55,
Adelle said she was too old for tire swings?
I think a board popped loose,
On the barn that day.
Aaron, Sweetheart,
That one I remember,
I was scared and I cried.
I didn't really know quite why.
Charlotte, Honey,
You remember back in '62,
Adelle said she was off to Chicago,
Got accepted at the college there?
I think a shingle flew,
Off the barn that day.
Aaron, Sweetheart,
I remember.
Adelle saw the tears in my eyes,
Said "I got to, Mama,
Nothin' goin' here but corn growin' ".
Charlotte, Honey,
You remember back in '65,
Little Jimmy was born in Chicago,
And we couldn't afford to go?
I think the windmill froze up that day.
Too many hail stones in the blades.
Aaron, Sweetheart,
I remember I cried myself blue.
I couldn't hold her,
I couldn't hold my granbaby.
Charlotte, Honey,
You remember back in '83,
Jimmy went and graduated,
From Inner City High,
Adelle sent us that nice picture,
Him in the prom suit,
Pretty date and all?
I think the rope swing branch,
Broke out of the old Oak that day.
Aaron, Sweetheart,
I cried something terrible that day.
He seemed so young.
Charlotte, Honey,
You remember in '98,
Jim had that slick new laptop computer,
In the lawyer's office?
I think the barn caved in that day.
In fact, it clean knocked that big Oak down,
The one I carved your name in Honey,
After I kissed you on VJ Day.
Tree mightn't have made it,
But I still mean forever, Love.
Aaron, sweetheart,
I cried so hard,
He said "I have to, Mama,
Nothin' goin' there but corn growin' ".
And Adelle just looked away.

The two pale ghosts,
They stood chatting,
There along the country road,
Watching Adelle cry,
Watching the sad look on Jim's face.
The family cemetery was already gone,
All it's headstones moved to town.
As the bulldozer knocked the old farmhouse down,
Adelle reminisced,
She'd never remembered so many houses,
It had been open fields,
Bright blue sky,
Birds and wildflowers.
Little Tommy Praxton,
Used to live a mile down the road.
He'd died in 'Nam.
Now there was a gas station,
A mile down the road.
The old Descatil High,
That was a dark-windowed pile,
Just empty old cracked bricks.
No swings left on the cast iron pipe frames,
Weeds growing up in cracks in the parking lot.
Adelle watched the yellow Caterpillar dozer move.
The last thing to go was her old playhouse,
The one where Tommy Praxton,
Snuck in and gave her her first kiss.
She cried hot tears,
As the wooden door splintered,
The one her Daddy had made,
On her fifth birthday.
There! My God, there!
There was a wreath of dried flowers...gone.
Her Daddy had put fresh flowers on the door,
Every year in April on her birthday,
"Happy Birthday, April Adelle!"
Adelle stared at the machines,
At the naked black Earth.
Where Home had been.
At the developer's billboard sign,
"Merry Hollow Townhomes -
From the 150's..."
Jim wondered,
At all the old farm buildings,
All in such disrepair,
As he drove his tearful Mom,
Back to the big city.
How peaceful,
He thought,
The countryside was.

Charlotte, Honey,
I think Adelle was wrong.
Everything happens here now,
And there ain't a stalk of corn growin'.
Aaron, Sweetheart,
Adelle was crying today,
When she told me,
She couldn't get home.
I'm worried about her, Sweetheart.
Which way is home, Sweetheart?
Charlotte, Honey,
I hate awful to admit it,
But I think I've lost my way,
I think we're lost, Sweetheart.

Joe put on his hard hat,
And began pouring the concrete.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 04/06/2002




By: Daniel A. Stafford

Author's Comments

An Analog, uhm, I mean pen-first creation.... Where I live, everything is a construction zone. Farms are dozed over, and banks and gas stations and houses and town homes and discount stores are
going up everywhere, filling in all the open fields. Where they're not building there are signs announcing projects to come. I wonder at the stories of the places that vanish. Who played there? Who fell in love there? I go back to Wisconsin, drive past my grandparents' place once in awhile, it's getting a mite - decrepit - They closed the Catholic High, the factory where Nono worked 44 years, the one where Dad worked 53. The church where Noni & Nono were married, Where Mom & Dad were married, where I was baptized, it was saved from destruction by being converted to an angel museum. Funny, Mom hated the priest who painted over the sky full of angels on the ceiling when she was a little girl. Every time I drive in the country, the barns are older and the paint more faded.
There are less windmills, less silos, less railroads. Less peace and more pace. Less Home.

Author	Date Entered/Modified	Views
Daniel A. Stafford	4/6/2002 4:39:45 AM 10/8/2022 9:58:36 AM	619

Total Comments: 1

Comments
Ron Purtlebaugh	rjp@aug.com	http://www.underthepoemtree.com	4/7/2002 8:00:39 PM
Very nice Daniel, I too have seen it come and watched it go, Nothin' Goin' But Corn Growin': sort of gave me a feeling of, 'been there, done that' in a pleasant way, even though the memories we cherish sometimes seem to be wiped away without regard, such is life I suppose, well done. Ron

Rowan's Promise...

Rowan's Promise...

Rowan had long locks of hair,
The color of Autumn fire,
Streaked through with chestnut brown.

Her eyes like amber and cinnamon were filled with an easy smile,
Warm like morning embers,
Easy to rekindle the bright light of laughter.

Rowan was the first-born daughter of Summer,
Her childhood filled with yellow dandelions and their seed-children flying on soft breezes,
Tickle-chin and bumble bees,
Butterflies and clover,
Beautiful lilac bushes and fireflies.

Soon enough came cool days,
Grasses grown tall and tufted,
Rabbits hiding abed and birds in big swooping black flocks,
Milkweed bursting with soft white and acorns falling,
Their caps like lost hats,
With breath hanging in the air like magic.

The leaves on the trees were mimics,
Vivid mirrors of Rowan's bright hair or her mother's,
Brown and red and orange and yellow,
Like cartoon fire decorating the land.

In what seemed like only a breath of time,
The air turn ed shimmering white as young Rowan exhaled,
Ponds became dark reflecting sheets of the soft charcoal-gray skies,
White flakes fell to Earth,
Days shortened into long and dark nights,
The stars became sharp and bright,
And drifts of snow rolled across the open fields,
Tufted by the tall locks of tawny-gold grasses and dark leafless trees.

Rowan and Summer lit candles and watched the Hunter dance across the cold dark nights.

It was one these long dark nights that Summer began to teach her daughter of their family:

"Rowan,
My love,
The time we just passed with the turning of the leaves,
The harvest and the falling of seeds,
The flight of the milkweed seed and the seeds of tall grasses on the wind,
The time of first breath steaming the air and first frost upon the prairies and windows,
That time was your time,
Your beauty lavishing the Earth."

Rowan smiled and remembered the beautiful colors,
And the feeling of the Spirit World close to the world of the living.

Summer continued the education of her daughter in her soft and warm voice:

"The time before that when all was green and hot,
When bees were busy and flowers turned to seed,
When leaves were emerald and creatures were swimming,
When dandelions showed their yellow heads and nights were warm and soft,
When birds raised their chicks,
That time was my time,
My beauty lavishing the Earth."

Rowan closed her amber eyes and remembered her youngest days,
When she roamed barefoot and waded in ponds chasing pretty dragonflies.

Summer continued on by the flickering light of candles,
As the snowy winds howled strong and frigid outside their house of stone and thatch,
An ancient abode made warm by the fire in a large hearth:

"Now we are in the time of my Grandmother Winter,
And this is her time,
And she will lavish her beauty upon the Earth."

Rowan's eyes opened in colorful surprise,
Full of doubt and disbelief.

"Mother,"
Said Rowan in a voice of dry leaves rustling in the tree tops,
"How can you call such as this beauty?"

Rowan gave depth to her question in a voice like a honking flock of geese and the flapping of many birds' wings:

"I can not bear to move far from our front door,
The trees look dead as sticks,
The paths I ran upon are treacherous with ice and snow,
The birds and bees and butterflies are all gone away,
And even the spiders,
Every pond is a sheet of ice as black as night,
And if the frozen winds do not chill my bones,
Then they howl and shriek about our door,
Worse if they are gone all is silent and dark as the days are short!"

Summer smiled as a wolf howled at the bright full Moon somewhere across the fields.

She replied to her daughter in the tones of a babbling brook and gently-rustling grasses:

"Look in the morning at the silver and crystal of the icicles in early sun,
And hear tonight the quiet inside,
For this is the time of rest and reflection,
Of learning and stories and tales of things long-gone and grand,
The time when old things pass and are either forgotten or woven into legend and songs,
As all the world makes ready for the arrival of my Mother,
The ever-lovely and new Spring."

Summer went on in the voice of bees buzzing and birds singing in the rustling boughs of trees:

"My Grandmother Winter is the source of all that is or ever will be,
She is the cold and the night,
The great void in which the Sun and Stars all nest,
She is the endless river of Time that allows the emergence of all which is new."

Upon these words a knocking came to their front door,
As if a sheet of snow and ice were flung at it,
And Summer smiled when she reached to open it for her dear Grandmother.

With a chill draft and a swirl of flurries,
Winter stepped over the threshold,
And the fire leapt and crackled as a burst of cold air rushed into the hearth,
Thereby feeding the burning of the logs stacked within.

She was beautiful,
With long and pale white hair trimmed in glittering ice crystals,
Her eyes as pale a blue as twinkling starlight,
Her hand like gnarled tree-bark clutching a staff of long-dead oak,
Her shawl of frost lace,
Covering the shoulders of her long black dress of deepest night,
Clasped together with the Moon as her brooch.

Winter looked down at her stunned great-granddaughter,
And she smiled like moonlight peeking through the dark clouds of a snowstorm in the night.

She spoke then,
And it was like the thunder of a distant avalanche accompanying carolers singing:

"Granddaughter,
You are lovely,
Born to herald my coming to the World,
The color before my pale and dark presence,
And I give you your True Name with love,
Autumn you will always be,
And a tree with red fruit will bear your child-name,
For all to remember your first season."

As Winter spoke,
The first rowan tree appeared,
In the ground at the foot of the path leading to Summer's door,
Just in the place where Autumn had first played as a toddler,
Its red fruit blended against the deep green of the pines,
And so we have the colors of Yuletide,
To remember the passing of Autumn's time to that of Winter.

Autumn's amber eyes danced with delight,
However Winter had further to tell her lovely great-granddaughter.

Winter's voice this time was the shrieking howl of a gale upon the frigid sea:

"When the wheel turns past my time,
Will come my first daughter Spring,
With flowers and new creatures born,
Early rains and new leaf-buds upon the trees,
Though you will never meet your lovely Grandmother,
Nor she you,
I shall tell her of you dear,
And you must tell all the World each year that I am coming,
So that All may be renewed."

"I will and I shall dear Grandmother!"
Autumn promised in a voice of a scythe singing among stalks of wheat.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 11/24/2018

The Flying Saucer Era...

The Flying Saucer Era...

I look up at the night,

Always searching.

I'll never believe in that splendor being empty.

Arrogance doesn't become us.

I want to believe.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 07/16/2017

"Rembrandt Sleeping..." Poem #30

 

 

The Bean Diet...

The Bean Diet...

Bean burritos,
Three kinds,
Only a buck forty-nine.

Red beans and rice,
Maybe an apple,
Would be nice.

Wallet may be thin,
Yet somehow,
We'll win.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 07/15/2017

"Rembrandt Sleeping..." Poem #29

Midnight Moo...

Midnight Moo...

A simple Trade Joe's delight,
Requires the cows to come home,
Full of chocolate dreams.

I dance to the 'fridge,
Beaming...

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 07/14/2017

"Rembrandt Sleeping..." Poem # 28

Author's note:
I love this stuff for making chocolate milk before bed, but have it only very rarely.

Dusty Old Letters From Tesla...

Dusty Old Letters From Tesla...

You can see the genius in the handwriting,
Meticulously cluttered,
Like an attic closet lost for a century.

The dry must is blown off the yellowed envelopes,
All eyes widen with delight.

Back in the day,
It was known as "correspondence,"
Hand-written and soul-bared.

The wonders of the Universe,
Revealed,
Wax seals that had partly re-stuck,
Grudgingly giving up their sleeping secrets.

It was all tales of love,
Love with a mystical beauty un-bound by our petty rules,
Cosmos was her name.

Nicola gave us an adoring view under her skirts.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 07/11/2017

Rembrandt Sleeping, poem #26

Spindle...

Spindle...

Around,
The creation of sound,
Mostly bright colors,
Adapting to the time.

In a digital world,
Analog sounds sweet.

What lasts is what tells,
Long after the last album sells.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 07/12/2017

"Rembrandt Sleeping..." poem #27

Author's note:
If ever I am wealthy enough, I will buy a beautiful old console stereo, put in a top-of-the-line turntable and sound system, one that glows like stereos used to, and gently, reverently, set needle to vinyl...

Throw-Away People...

Throw-Away People...

Out to pasture young,
Fifty isn't too old,
Nor fifty-five.

When people are just a ledger entry,
In a world of "throw-away..."

Society is insane.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 07/09/2017

"Rembrandt Sleeping," Poem # 25

A Highly-Charged Particle...

A Highly-Charged Particle...

The stress of the pennies,
They don't rain from Heaven.

A bucket of marital bliss,
Wrapped in a dollar-sign bow.

The wires buzz and hum.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 07/08/2017

Rembrandt Sleeping, poem #24

Dry...

Dry...

In the midst of nothing,
Sleep is calling,
The well has nothing,
No Muse to move me.

Set the alarm and drift,
Nothing.

So that was last night...

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 07/08/2017

Rembrandt Sleeping, poem # 23

Good Night Maine Coon...

Good Night Maine Coon...

Orange ball of purring,
Fuzzy good-night.

A heart the size of California,
My buddy Corona.

Who needs words,
When you can head-butt and purr?

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 07-06-2017

No Wasted Moments...

No Wasted Moments...

If sleep is a necessity,
It is also an enemy.

While I love dreams,
There is a limit I face.

Only so many hours,
Only so many days,
Years on this Earth,
Those are always counted.

If only dreams were instant...

---Or lives endless.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 07-05-2017

"Rembrandt Sleeping," poem # 21

Stuffed...

Stuffed...

An eerie glow fills the room,
Flick of the switch.

My own thoughts remain unborn,
My head filled to bursting,
With the carefully-crafted thoughts of others,
People I don't even know.

Stuffed.

AquarianM

By Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 06-30-2017

Rembrandt Sleeping - Poem # 20

Prodigal Poet...

Prodigal Poet...

Pages have lain bare,
Wanting for ink,
Thirsty for soul dreams,
Lonely for mind-candy's hallowed release.

More than six years pass by,
Finally my pen is back to hand,
In the wee hours,
Absent the glow of electrons and keys.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 06-29-2017

Rembrandt Sleeping, Poem # 19.