The Adirondacks in Spring
People walk their dogs in flannel shirts
as the dirty snow melts into gutters and culverts.
The air, sharp and fresh, is scented with pine and spruce.
The Starbucks drive-through line is filled,
car washes are busy, gardeners work the mud in boots.
Children haul dusty bikes from the back of the garage
and ride past colonial homes that have housed
generations before and since the rebellion.
City people weekend here to hike mountain trails
and connect to nature, oblivious to the blood
that has soaked this ground since the Iroquois ruled,
and the forests dulled the screams of mothers
who watched their children die—
America, land of free, land of slaughter,
land like any land.
Famine in the Heartland
I. Wisconsin
The ground was rich and fertile,
but empty furrows taunted the boy
as he stared across the family fields,
and the winter wind sang
the dirge of seasonal monotony:
mud, dirt, and slow growth
before the harvest graced
the fields once again.
He pulled his cold, booted foot
from the mire and turned his back
to the farm, his eyes squinting
at dawn scaling the horizon.
The cows eyed him as they chewed
silent cuds and shifted patiently
from foot to foot. His father moved
among them, patting heads
with reassuring kindness.
“Don’t worry, things will be better
in the spring,” he told them in Flemish,
which the boy understood
but was loath to speak
as a native-born American.
“Yes, things will be better,” he thought,
before turning to his father.
“Papa, I can’t stay here,”
his breath dancing in a frosty cloud
across the morning. The farmer listened
with a puzzled grin as the boy
spoke of famine of the spirit,
and the drought of imagination
that plagued his soul just across the border
from the new American city
exploding on the lakeshore.
“It calls me,” he said, “I have to go.”
His father nodded, but his eyes were
confused and wounded.
“Go with my blessing,” he finally said
with a shrug, and the boy was soon
on the train, heading south.
II. Chicago
The cacophony along the river
was a symphony of promise
and opportunity to his rural ears.
He attended medical school
and, with other doctors, staffed a new hospital
run by nuns on the South Side.
He was skilled and admired,
sainted by his patients,
but a famine of family troubled
his spirit, and he considered
returning north until he spotted
the Irish nurse with the shy smile
and eyes that sparked and flared
with what seemed emerald warmth
but was really shame and anger.
Starving for connection,
he couldn’t tell the difference,
couldn’t countenance returning home,
couldn’t resist, and they married with
blurry vision, hoping to fill their table
with the feast of a loving family.
III. Eberhart Avenue
In a bungalow, six children romped
and tumbled down stairs.
One daughter was incinerated
at eight, playing with matches.
His wife blamed him for the death
and fled to a two-year exile
in the Arizona desert
with their youngest son, her baby,
to cure his tuberculosis in the medicinal sun,
reflecting in waves across the sand,
broiling her undiluted pain into flaming hatred.
The two older sons drank whiskey
and shot morphine in Chicago
saloons and alleys, while the older daughter
cursed him and brawled with him
on the front lawn, the other daughter
watching mutely from the front porch.
His life was barren,
days filled with sick patients
and people he couldn’t save,
telling numb relatives
to call the undertaker,
nights with a sullen wife
whose sour tongue was a brutal knife.
He drank buttermilk
to soothe his searing ulcers
and listened to *The Lone Ranger*
on a console radio in the corner of the living room,
a few minutes of escape in the welcoming,
mythical world of the American West
where the bad were punished
and wrongs righted at the end of a gun.
He was hungry, but his plate was empty
in the Midwestern city where he suffered,
as the streetlights did little
to dispel night’s gloom.
IV. Holy Sepulchre
Each morning began with a cold stare.
Each evening was a dark shadow of regret.
The quiet daughter held his hand,
but the nights were dark,
the dinner was never enough,
and he was always hungry.
His parents were gone,
and he was an émigré
from the farmland.
His hair thinned, his resolve grew weak,
and with a failing, famished spirit,
he passed on to lie
in the cold soil of the cemetery,
a stone monument his only companion.
The quiet daughter wept,
but that was little comfort,
as he lay hungry in the grave,
having starved in the land of plenty,
which drove past, never noticing the stone
marking his lonely, empty life.
