Midwest: Georgics.

• Author: Baker, David
• Position: Poetry - Brief Article

1. The wind is the weather. The worst will blow off the surge in a matter of moments--, the best is a blessing, less rain or ruin, but no less a shock for the suddenness. In the time it takes the wind to turn, or a voice to turn into wind, we have gone from the hulking balers to box lots lined on long tables, books and bruised silver, outlandish toys, tools, strange clothes, crates of nothings. It's a bright day in a killer summer and we're kicking through a wasted bean field, trying to pick up, on a slow thermal, the near-harmonic of twin auctioneers setting the price for farm things from on high. 2. I wish I were like the famous poet --disembodied, a voice out of nowhere-- postmodern and uninvolved. What I am trying to get at is a general, all-purpose experience--like those stretch socks that fit all sizes. The particular occasion is of lesser interest to me than the way a happening or experience filters through me. Words flit past with the force of fate, missed. A gray gull coasts off on a costly breeze--, then calls back over one wing, unintelligible as a critic, foundling, fond ... it sounds like nobody's story, in particular. 3. And that would be fine ... except here we are, come for the auction of a neighbor's dead farm, flooded, snowed out, burned out by bad drought and years of subsidy undercosting, another neighbor ... in particular: Thom. Dawson, his wife Rachel, their son Sam, in their particular death-throe, blown down utterly by their bank, itself an arm of a swollen corporate torso. Look at them leaning on air. It's worse than a wake. The ones being mourned attend their own ceremony, selling-off goods and souls, and three mouths to feed. Such pain is serious, tangible: unironic ... 4. Look at them leaning in plaid shirts and boots. Will one pair of socks keep their six feet dry? Shoppers! friends! neighbors! let us consider the values at hand! And let's help our friends--, this could happen to you, too, any time. What am I...