The Humphrey Farm 3

August 16, 2014

A narrow tar-patched road divides the Humphrey farm. It doesn’t take long for even a small creature to cross over. My poet-and-writer friend June Goodwin has given me permission to share a relevant poem she wrote for me. Look below the photograph.

 Of

For Linda Grashoff

The bacterium Leptothrix discophora

lives on the interface

between air and water,

clutching dearly, direly to the Vermillion River.

Linda photographs its smear

often     again     more, lauding

the geography and fervor

of its plush pudding.

This is fools’ oil.

Stirred by a tool,

the gash won’t reseal

quickly, as with oil.

Also it can

enzymatically oxidize

manganese

and iron.

If it stayed in sun (no night)

and got hotter, hottest,

it’d solidify to hematite,

obdurate and silverest.

On some fall days

the physical effulgences

of earth flatten us

to thin, stained glass.

Then sun stunned,

I succumb to the illusion

that euphoria can remedy

aging and even perfidy.

I thumb the stems of leaves

that face the inevitable with equanimity,

not wanting, the way I crave

the light even as it’s lavishing me.

When the sun, that lyric,

hums, slant, from far down the street,

varicose tar patchings

resembling squashed Arabic

on a horizontal mosque,

glare metallically through haze,

writing unfamiliar phrases,

flummoxing the ox.

Linda tries obsessively to render

the wetness of water,

glorifying the physical

to a point almost finical.

Synchronous, as she explores,

I wander out beige, return

slurred by color, sweaty with metaphors

and made in the image

of.