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Monday, November 24, 2014

EDGES


EDGES


Just beyond the prairie road
corn rows swallowed a town,
         whole
         towns—
                  people,                                         
who left themselves in a graveyard.
         Ancestors, concentrated in a square,
         conveniently located for those who care. 
Nod your head as you drive by
or stop and tell the old folks “Hi.”

Our families settled here –
         then frontier –
to spend lifetimes
         carving edges . . . in the ground,
Setting out
         whom they could become
         and where they could be found…
                  safe…
         from the raiders
                  they invaded.

There was Jeremiah’s farm –
         full –
         of the grounding tools
                  that plowed and raked their lives together,
                  surrounding them with names . . . homes
                            . . . and fences. 
         Full of kids
                  straining to get out
                  and breathe America’s chances.

Then
they buried each other.
The cemetery,
a church yard once,
punctuates a sea of corn whose annual tide creep
         challenges their edges’
         integrity and symmetry.

We are halted by their sentinel:
         Plaqued words on a pedestal

         speak of a wooden church burned long ago,
         Indian wars
                  and the Farrell’s store.

We linger to honor those who spent a lifetime
         building lifelines to our future
by tending through their death-time
         their place between the edges,
         keeping them safe from today’s invaders:
                  This year, corn,
                   last year, beans,
and by taking them with us.

For here, under our feet, only part of their journey ended.

Settlers continue their settling
         into the earth,
         our minds,
         our stories.

We travel today,
         unsettled raiders,
absconding with 
then rewriting family stories,
ungrounded tools
         for carving modern edges.

Who are we?
And who were they?
What did the family do?
When?
Daddy, tell me the story again.


Dennis R. Keefe

July 28, 2005
April 18, 2015
 

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