1 October 2026
(11 March 2016) We recognize that it is difficult to see how the entire poem works, without having it all together. Now that we have parsed and explicated it, here is the entire poem, the title poem from our collection, Ode to a Stump Farm. Enjoy!
Ode to a Stump Farm
I.
I wander hallways of
memory
passing doors hiding chambers
wherein the past is held
awaiting recall
Door marked “Stump Farm”
opens.
I enter, see scattered
shards of glass
broken
from the mirror of reality,
each piece reflecting
the past.
I handle each, fondly reliving
a place now lost.
II.
How does one say
goodbye
to an old friend
if that friend
is a place?
III.
A shard reflecting–
first visit with intentions
fleeing
clapboard & asphalt
tyranny
embracing natural harmony, solitude.
Way paved with ice
pine trees encroaching
over-arching constricting
the road, a cold green tunnel.
Trudging the path snow
crunching
walking on loose stone
covering the alley
behind
our nearly former home.
I learned how great-grandpa Rice
must have felt
when, nearly a century before,
he pushed, a wheelbarrow
containing all his possessions,
thirty miles
over trackless mountains.
Green tunnel behind,
Dad and I entered the meadow,
awestruck
by the view–
other side distant, hazy
my old neighborhood small,
confining.
New grass–bright green compared to pine trees
surrounding the meadow–
clothed naked earth, stretched
thousands of yards before us.
Breeze jostled cattails,
chapped hands rubbed together,
frogs spoke, crickets
sang: “Peace, solitude–peace, solitude–
Home.”
Blackened stumps,
fading to
fire-scorched timber–
distant past–
“What are you growing?”
grandpa asked his new father-in-law,
looking over field of absent trees.
“Stumps,” Henry Rice replied.
Grandpa smiled, mischief
sparkling in his eyes,
“A stump farm.”
Dad touched fire-blackened timber,
remains–
great-grandpa’s cabin–
where he was born blue,
little hope for his
survival.
Parents fought death,
infant mortality,
won future prize–
grandson in the image
of grandfather.
IV.
I lift another piece, recent
clear,
last visit two decades later, road
neglected,
rutted from spring
forlorn,
fences falling down,
no blue Fordson tractor,
red Studebaker farm truck.
Bales of hay should be stacked
next to the empty woodshed–
winter feed for Dad’s appaloosa
horse named Foxfire,
not chomping the grass
obscuring the pond.
Sorrow pierced
my heart, my hands
itched
desire to cut
wood, repair fences.
Looking across the meadow,
tall grass moving,
waves rolling over a sea of gold,
my eyes rested on
cedar stump, last
of great-grandpa’s cutting,
thick as I am, tall as me
cut
during winter of ’22,
one of many timbers, replacing
bridge
washed away by chinook melted snow.
Stump tipped over,
eight sticks of dynamite
detonated at sunrise,
waking
neighbors for miles,
celebrating
Independence Day, 1945.
Get this collection from your favorite ebook store, or in print from the link provided. Good reading!
Leave a comment