Foreclosure
Foreclosure
Since the day the banker drove out
to tell them they had to sell they’d
all pulled their eyes in close lest
they dwell on beloved things
as if their souls were in danger
of passing into trees and hills and
rooms and tools and of being
auctioned off with everything
else pulled their sight close to them
like it was warmth and the loss
of the farm one long cold night
but in those last days like falconers
they let their eyes fly off
in great rushes sweeping through
everything preying ravenously
upon beauty in a kind of praying
returning to them from time to
time where they stood like towers
in field or kitchen or woods the boy
most of all because all he knew
was the coming loss tempered by
none of the relief his folks felt
so twined with their sorrow it was
hard for them to tell the two apart
and the land recognizing this gave
itself wholly to the boy to be
remembered his father so busy
moving machinery for the sale trying
to put it all in light good enough
to bring a decent price and his mother
so busy scrubbing twenty years
of their living from the floors
neither noticed how full the boy
was becoming with seeing how
wide his eyes were nor noticed
what it was his walking meant only
asking him “Where are you going?”
“Walking” “God but you’ve been
walking” “Let him walk” and he
walking out upon that farm he
would soon be a stranger upon
already the ash of trespass filled
his steps even as every thing saw
him for what he was an instrument
of harvest sent out to gather
into his soul every innocent holy
thing before it was all subdivided
and what little left to be farmed
so exhausted by such specific rape
and beleaguered with the petition
of poison nothing would live
but what it was determined by
the inheritors should so that thistles
as holy in their potential to cause
pain as any willow gentled in
its sorrow called out to the boy
to be remembered because the next
would not suffer them in the fence
rows nor even find their distant
purple blossoming beautiful but
would go about solemnly spraying
them nor would the cantilevered
sheds be allowed to stand for the
nothingness they stood for but
these would be broken down
like cardboard boxes heaped
into little hills and these swiftly
on the first windless day burned
so that they were reduced only
to bones of their nails and nine
hundred Lents these cried out
to the boy to be remembered as
did the field trees his grandfather
had let stand though pardoning
them meant the fields whirled
around them like conceptions
of space and made for hard turns
with the hay rake but had been
deemed holy as they were havens
for foxes and fawns and sanctuary
for gentle things to run towards
when the fields were scythed down
within an inch of bare earth by
a machine that was twenty men
scything and the limbs of such
trees deemed good enough for him
to risk falling from for if farm
boys can’t risk breaking bones
how are all their chores worth
all that sweat these as the boy
walked called him for the first
time ever before by his name
to remember them the way their
branches flowed into the sky
like a river’s mouth for surely
these would not be suffered
but windrows made straight
the foxes buried alive in their
backfilled dens the stumps ground
down beneath the level any plow
could reach and years the soil
had been patterned in whirls
erased in long parallels that would
know nothing but that they ran
from one end of a field to the other
in obedience but it wasn’t only
the trees that called to be included
in his memory but the whole woods
standing in the silence of things
only fleetingly on earth creaking
with the approximate sound
of a gallows abandoned by a crowd
grown bored with the body’s
metronomic swinging something
of the guillotine in the way all
the branches seemed stilled in
the moment before falling even
the birds’ throats shoveled full
of the blue gravel of a silence
of both the past and of the future
so that for the first time in his
life the boy felt like a trespasser
there like a man in a church
of rival denomination like a river
that realizes it’s in the streets
of an evacuated town and flows
home to its proper bed then a buck
broke from a break of thorns
not to be remembered but to flee
the boy’s consciousness as if it were
a meadow bristling with guns
but in the racket it made it was
doomed to be remembered there
were some things that wished
not to be entered in the ledger
of the boy’s heart that preferred
if the farm was doomed to die
to die with it and so actually
avoided the boy such as the owl
that could have revealed itself
to him but chose to deepen
itself in the narrative of limbs
like a character that exists
only in the author’s mind while
other things leapt at him with such
fervor to be remembered he
almost felt sick with their insistence
such as a certain hill that wrested
a light down from the evening
to flaunt its curvature insisting
he remember the gradual falling
graph of its horizon like war dead
of an unpopular war the way it
held its acre of wheat until he had to
tear his eyes away and absorb
the old mare who would be sold
and promptly diced into dog meat
because where they were moving
the only horses were paddocked
and sullen in engines of leased cars
the mare galloped into his mind
her mane livid with wind joyous
in the knowledge she was eternal
now thanks to him his attention
like the attention Christ turned
upon the lepers and the blind
who came to him desperate to be
healed passing from her in
to the shadow of the silos he
shivered in the cold dark they
cast and under their heights sensing
how they too held harvests knowing
for the first time how excruciating
it was for them to bear entire
seasons of growth in the stasis
of storage all that weight composed
of entire summers’ suns and rain
borne now for nothing for no
animals would survive the sale
all would be trucked away on dark
roads milked by weary men
in transit eyes rolling and revealing
white in fear like stones from tombs
revealing angels so that the silos
in this knowledge seemed threatening
to collapse and spill all the seeds
they held in a desperate attempt
at sowing what still possessed minds
to grow so that the boy hurried
through their shadows those deep
and chilling communions to hear
from the porch his mother calling
him to supper in the house’s voice
for the house also demanded to be
remembered so he went towards it
like a ship towards a coast of sirens
their boxing of everything up
had simplified the house into its
barest elements so that it was
as if for the first time in his life
he saw it for what it was not what
sheltered their lives but its life
itself its doorframes windows
banisters cracks in plaster its light
fixtures hanging glumly with nothing
to illuminate but their last supper
in that kitchen also made bare all
the cabinets empty nothing
but the table and three chairs
and what she’d needed to cook
the last meal with they could’ve
stayed a month or more longer
before the closing but after
the papers were signed he’d said
he’d feel like a stranger there
best to get on down to Dixon
where he’d start at the plant Monday
and she could get the house fixed
up the way she was used to
no use hanging around here
waiting to get booted out I’ll
walk away with my own dignity
since this is all they let you
keep in this world and even this
they try to make you leave
laying around so they can come
take it too and then again in the voice
of the house she called to him
to come up from the shed where
all he was doing was moving things
from place to place to eat the bird
dead on the table with a finality
so utter it seemed impossible
the meat could give them any
strength to endure what they’d
have to endure the next day
and like it was any of the twenty
or so years’ of nights he took
off his boots the way he always
did and washed up in the bath
room and said “Smells good”
which was what he said every
evening even if he had a cold
or it didn’t smell good at all
and kicked the dog lovingly
away from the table the dog
which they’d keep and which
they’d all burdened with their
affection because they had less
and less to feel affection for
and though she wondered what
they had to be thankful for he
led them in the prayer they’d said
every night all those years no matter
how bad things had gotten saying
Bless us oh Lord for these Thy
gifts we are about to receive
from Thy Bounty through Christ
our Lord Amen and as they ate
in silence and as all sounds now
also poured into the boy sieved
into senses it was as if a great
magician hovered over the land
with a wand of clotted stars
to pronounce some arcane spell
of disappearance upon them
all and though talk was tried
mostly they fell silent beneath
that silent gesture until the bird
was picked bones and they
went out to the porch conscious
now of last times the last time
washing dinner plates under
that faucet he’d never quite
gotten to quit leaking last time
sitting down in his rocker
with the relief of a man who has
just eaten well with the ones
he loves last time watching evening
fall in the lilacs last as if in their
blossoms some bastion of day
held out like forts when a nation’s
fallen and then what they’d all
rushed out to be sure to see they
saw the last first firefly glow
in the grass and though no one
said anything by quick glances all
three knew all three had seen it
and had registered its significance
especially the boy because no
sooner had the first’s light expired
into the lights of all the others
but he and she began in the
privacy of their minds to worry
about the day while the boy
pardoned of worry suffered
the last procession of the farm
into him ebbing into his eyes
peaceful as spring water now
as the wand flinched and the trick
accomplished not the disappearance
of the farm but its conversion
from matter into memory