LOSSES

There was that yellow flower bush
to the right of the front porch.
If you carefully disjointed the yellow stem from the blossom ,
you could suck a sweet juice from it,
but only if you didn't tear it.
We never knew the name of that bush,
have forever searched for it in nurseries and around old houses
but they never seem quite the same.

The man could see that something was not right
and he called the police.
The Crimestoppers puts the mugs of the working class
onto the screen, between cop shows
for the righteous to report from their boredom,
while the real criminals
release into the air and water and earth the cancer supply
that makes even them suffer their losses;
Mom, George, Tom and Aunt Minnie
their souls to God, everyone prayed.

Only a gentle pull would yield that microscopic nectar
And only way back then
no one else knew about that sweet
all they knew was to rip and chew.

Losses like the elm tree
Like the crab apple, like the green apple, like
the Huge Yellow Rose Bush, eight feet high
When that yard went and the old house was torn down,
that was the beginning of the end.
First it was Interstate 80 through the farm,
then came the billboards, the flood lights, lead from exhaust fumes,
then the car that sped past the barricade to clunk into our hog lot, five teenagers inside, decapitated.
It is all really so sad.
The loam now a bleached sand.
The old man, his muscles still ready to work,
locked for five years in a place with a half door, like the cow barn,
his cooling wrists tied
with restraints while he strained
toward the spring fields.

Down by the river in the sweltering Iowa heat,
in that lush, tropical vegetation,
I refused to drink booze and my knees were pinched
and my breasts could not be known
because there really weren't any there,
but my sister was drunk and open to boys
like a natural plant in a downpour
growing ever lusher and greener,
the river just rushing by under the cliffs
and the valley forever imprinted
in our dreams as a source we can't recognise
even as it nourishes our cracking faces
age never catching up
with the Dewey girls...

The noise of the world came in.
The voice of a birth,
of vomit and accidents,
And everyone running,
hiding where they could,
so shortly afterwards, too
And in such artificial netting,
The mesh of affordable wedding dresses
and 12 hour
I seemed to be the only one
who was surprised that the poor quality of it all
passed everyone else by, undetected.

Now life goes on.
Torment of jobs, tv, refrigerators
mothers who reach out claw-like hands, jabbering
take me home, take me home.