Shucked Ears of Maize
To Jim
By James August Eidson
I cupped his hand, felt his blood shed,
Heavy as an eye defying sleep.
Grandpa leadened, fell like wind
Ironing the sea.
Once, he would lecture,
Waggling the spine of a puppet,
We would listen:
Him, embittered by the boiled world
As the Free-Masons kindled its fire.
This earth must have plotted against him.
Couldn’t he have saved us?
But now he lay on the bed, sipping the air
Every five seconds, wondering if
It was worth it to estrange himself
For the sake of a feud.
Certainly a man that smart deserved his share,
Blowing waves over coal,
The world glowing beneath his breath.
But on the bed with all of it beyond his fingers
The past vandalized his face--
The broken strings of spit.
Heartbreak was just the poor crop
Of honor, of durability and conviction.
Self-righteous fucker,
His pain began with passions that stormed his skull,
And though a cosmetician
Fixed his “glory,”
He didn’t need it,
Austere on his bed as Lenin under glass.
The abandon that wracked his face
In death had been there all along.
It was that starved curiosity
He’d kneel to every time that
Stung me.
How we’d wander, aimless, for hours in “Flander’s Field.”
Then, death was a mutual curiosity,
A kind of fire we liked to painlessly bat
And wave our hand through.
