Shucked Ears of Maize

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.