Grit And Spittle Poem by r james sterzinger

in the center of my father's farm or the remnants of had been a farm. before inflation and change had made it impossible
to make a living, on forty acres I sat. to the east to the creek, the springs, the north the remains of a woods, the west, the end and edges of town.the steeple of St. Mary's pointing straight up from the middle. there in the center of the field I sat on the foundation and floor of an old shed, with the horse drawn rake and plow.

in between the fields of buttercups and weeds
the redwings trilled
the crickets hummed and all was covered with the incense of dust and pollen all offered to a God who praised work with no reward.
even the honey of the wasps had the grit of gravel
the same grit and gravel that compose the folks that lived there
the gravel and grit that their God mixed with spittle as he created them


there in the fields in the wave and waves of pasture I drowned. drowned in dreams drowned in sadness my head occasionally gasping for air. butdrown I did I drowned there an early childhood a belief in a fat man in red suit who slid down chimneys the kind we didn't have. drowned under an overworked father's weight. drowned in between a mother's over-stretched love

still I miss the fields which belong to others now, the old house gutted and rebuilt. dreams thrown away to make new doorways and windows and stairwells for other dreamers, dreamers who refuse to sit in the middle of fields graced with the incense of grief and grit.. dreamers who now dream in other places with other stimuli... ones like me when i was a child are never to be found in open fields of these slowly shrinking towns...


in those days...my mother hung her broken dreams with the dish cloths and diapers on the line..I remember