MEASURE FOR JESS HARPER

Bury your hands in coverall rough, Jess Harper.

Send us a grief so loyal we’re tamed.

Your burnt-out combine, up on Solomon Road,

after all these years still reaps hollow air.

I’ve been away a decade now.

I’ve been dire past the skyline.

I learned from you to listen

when birds strum over angled

wherever draws them home.

A man needs a screened-in porch for evening.

That way he can sit mute-like and train-hearing distant.

He can be the last forty years with its intricate foot trails.

Jess, had I a dollar, I’d float it down the creek

in flimsy ripples, a calm reminder of your merit.

Of all things overlooked, midnight

and a man with flashlight walking furrows is one.

The remote place a heart looks out from is another.

Every winter your shack gave smoke rolls

—that image, if anything, an imprint on time.

It should matter what mission is ours.

My faith is your hand lifting leaves

in the grand dark of corn fields,

your light fumbled into the undersides,

with no power to alter, so instead confirming.

appeared in Blueline, Volume XX