Iowa Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

[on the paintings of Grant Wood,
and on David Lynch's lovely film The Staight Story
and on Iowa, itself, forever]

I would have bartered my heart
for these precints
wildly green;

mirroring the hills of Heaven,
hill after hill till unseen
with the cardinal red of barns,

blinding silos in a moment's gleam,
the small farms
where I longed to go

forever never knowing anything else, anymore;

just to shut a frame door on a few flowers
or to go downtown of a Christmas
to a perfect town square decorated

a crystal something in the air

all brick and awnings
with the one war memorial there staunch
through summer's heat or in snows

nestled and the tawny roads upreach;
the plainspoken steeples
or the vanishing points

where the trestles meet
and the pink orchards rivaled only
by the fragrance of the feed stores

where the rakes glistened.

the front porches fronted
by poplars, maples
rustling with angels

these are my fables

whether scarlet or in
their july greens
anticipating by their whispering

the stillness before dreams
before storms, and the hidden streams
glazed over;

the wind through the screen door's
ozone before the sweeping rains
and the grain lands

sifting continuously contiuously
as though they had spoken to you all alone
in sunlight in cool shade

even from birth;
to you whoever you were from the first;
wherever you were intending to be

even if you were only there
for an hour or two or for a day,
just passing through:

as if to say even so, to you from birth
'your soul is made from this earth.'

mary angela douglas 3 february 2016