To the Farm, Where I Grew Up

Corn and beans, and how tall they stand,
How they fill the treeless plain.
It’s as if I emerged from their rows,
My steel-toed boots muddy and heavy,
And I turned around, lens flare of the sun,
And the view was the same as the hair on my arm,
The same as math problems in a row in a book
With only the odd ones answered in back.
Days of rain, weeks of growth,
Cardinals which resemble a bishop’s mitre,
Long rows of empty tracks leading nowhere,
Slow driving down between the fields,
The atom-bomb-shaped feeder on the lot.
Even sweet Bridget, the Lutheran,
In the hayloft where the hobos used to sleep.
Our pyramid of the sun is gone now,
Nothing but air and a little dust
Spread out among the hogs, who remind me
To wipe my ass so it don’t stink to high heaven.