Small Calm Farm

Happy, healthy, naturally raised chickens.

Australorps, Barred Rock and Rhode Island reds. Very hardy.

After a very slow period from mid-November to the end of January when the days were shorter, the girls are laying 15-18 eggs a day.

We abandon what only annoys us, take

our faba and melon alone and early

in such as light as the curtains allow, purchase

the weather from checkered gentlemen,

sketch lilies in the margins of unread flight novels

and barely speak of how our days went.

---

C’est la.

Take the print

from that wall.

It is far

too patent.

Hang it

over the antique

chifforobe, near

the finches.

It will echo

the colors

in their cage.

Our motives

are apparent

as the manner

of our shoes

is learned.

---

There is no music here

save that which winds

your necklace tight.

You twist a fingered imitation

of Moebius, strip gently

an oyster from its open shell,

tap your foot slightly

like your mother

and bemoan her

taste in stony gardens.

I tell another story, quit

smoking and wear myself

like a pedaled machine.

---

Say la. Oooh

this certainly is

the new man denied

before us, more ad

vantageous for the film

we’re in and simply

wet with worthy.

Pour les femmes

nous croyons, our visions

drawn by hands shifting

hairy in the softened

glare. A man is easier

to mold into a door

than to look at with this

much wonder. Viens-tu.

Tiens toi là.

Show us

the lighting

behind the fine

fine angles, the

lines pinched inside

the leanest shadows of you.

---

So blasé, the fat absentee

wiring a preference to the auction.

He is an artful office of rich

thick wool wound about the ankles

of makeshift lovers. They may

know a riddle and he wants

its name. We erase our faces’

creases with red styptic pens,

skin the peelings from our apples

and caw, when cornered, like mottled bitterns.

---

Oooh la la. She

is cleaner than a mother

goddess, but wanton

as a drunken peasant

at the harvest

festival, yet

finely so textured

and very well

mounted. More

than just a whistled

vision and brighter

than a primal

mask. And shaped, oh,

no demanding abstraction

or intrusion of colored

idea. No nervous

German this one; he had

a keen and steady hand

and placed on her

the correct amount

of breasts. Voila

mes freres, hypocrites

lecteurs. Ooh ooh and oh so la.

---

Tonight we buy.

We buy an ounce of odor.

We buy much and long

coats of favorite animal.

We want, again,

to endow our possible

limps with the lithe redemption

of hide. We cover

ourselves in the numbly felled,

in blacks and browns, in chosen

homes of nearly wood. If we

could see beauty as clearly as

the hairs we trim weekly,

we might stop bending

into magazines which ask

for nothing but our envy,

our awe, our firm pursuit.

We might lose then,

finally, these breezy lobbies

that make us wait, that play us

always, taut as catgut

across mauve violins.

---

What a palaver

these instruments

strewn about the band shell.

The minstrels of blue

have shut their lockers

at the station and left

whole gangs of echoes

to wander the tunnels, playing

fugues for crippled quarters,

cradling papered bottles

to soothe the din of afternoon.

A sad Selah. Our stories

are neither about ourselves

nor beyond our nailed ceilings.

There are colors

rawed in the hallway

and guitars in the kitchen

twanging inane rebellions,

the hits from days we surely

romanced or imagined.

We burn like flagged targets

in a blown sandy country

and scan the courtyards

for sculpted children

memorizing their phases of moon.

They may have lost their desire

to play as waves or sparks.

---

We dress darkly

and nothing of

the night surprises.

We mute its sirens by hanging

yards of grey-flecked drapes.

We count the roses

in a heavy delivered vase

and control the show’s volume

from the couch at ten paces.

We read of an emaciated carpenter

with awl holes in his palms;

he’s thin and set between panes

of glass, suspended in urine

and more than once named lovely.

Don’t bother to shock us.

We’re inured of shock, though

we know of bearded censors

and their casual cigars.

We are more than often

no more than amused.

What is immediate

we name knowledge.

We are politic, and can

spell, with some assistance,

abnegate and aesthetic.

---

Light,

more light.

We must

have light.

This is the art

of the lesion

on the classical

mask. Our

hope

is a tragic

lack

in blankets,

to cover

the darkness,

to illumine

our room at night.

We misquote

the whole

known universe

and mistake

the sublime

for fruit or time.

We haven’t begun

to define

our limbs’ uses.

An abrupt abutment

of wide earth and broad air

is a line that draws him

without end to the boundary

–

of wide earth and broad air.

He plows a square on the plain

without end to the boundary:

the bent hedgepost by the sun.

–

He plows a square on the plain

he inherits and stares past

the bent hedgepost by the sun,

beyond the town, across the land.

–

He inherits and stares, past

an isolate tree and an elevator

beyond a town, across the land.

And on and along the horizon:

–

an isolate tree and an elevator

nothing save grain goes up.

And on and along the horizon,

the high hum from tall poles.

–

Nothing save grain goes up

from flat here. There is ever

the high hum from tall poles

from the coal mine to Chicago.

–

From flat here, there is ever

an abrupt abutment.

From the coal mine to Chicago

is a line that draws him.

–

This poem, from about 20 years ago, is a pantoum, a very difficult, repetitive & cyclical form of Malaysian origin. It’s an attempt to capture my youth chisel-plowing the flat, fecund fields of south central Illinois after harvest. On a clear day, I could see 7 grain elevators from my house and spent many hours in the tractor, turning up the dirt after harvest. It was my favorite job.

Dogs like to dig holes. Fair enough. But this seems weird. What’s that poking out from under the dog house?

It’s Isla, resting in the hole she dug. Odd pup.

I’ve built two dog houses so far. Each time, the sheep have moved in and the poor dogs have to share their inside space.

Or dig deep holes inside the shelters where it’s cooler on hot days and they get some space to themselves.

I have an inordinate affection for barn swallows. These tiny birds, weighing less than 1 OUNCE (~28 grams), fly thousands of miles from the northern to the southern hemispheres in early autumn and back again in Spring. They eat only insects, usually in mid-air, and their amazing aerodynamics is a sight to behold. I love to watch them dart, bank, and flit at high speed over freshly mown pasture, snapping up unseen flies and mosquitoes. Of God’s innumerable creations, they are one of my favorites.

When I was blessed enough to find and purchase this 13 acre place in the country, it had a very old barn with half the roof collapsed. There were nearly a dozen barn swallows nests in the barn, most likely built by 1900 (the year the house was built), and about 3 dozen darting about the little farm. Before I closed on the property, insurance companies required that the barn be demolished within 30 days. The barn was dangerous, with its collapsed and still-collapsing roof, but I hated to destroy the swallow colony’s home.

To replace the barn, a carpenter friend and I built this “swallow hotel” by modifying an otherwise useless pergola, adding a second 1/2 story to it, leaving openings for the swallows to use. I also sawed openings on both ends of a storage shed. I hoped to lure the swallows back to the original home the following Spring after their over-wintering flight to Mexico or South America.

I was delighted when 2 pair of swallows returned the following May (2021), despite the destruction of their barn home and built-to-last mud nests. They didn’t build new nests in the upper portion of the storage shed or their luxurious hotel. Instead, they built two mud nests beneath their 2nd-floor intended lodgings and on top of the front porch light.

Ingrates. Ha.

By the beginning of October 2021, no more swallows. They had set out to their unknown destination, possibly as far south as central Argentina, ~5600 (~9100 km) away! The second week of May, 2022, 8-10 swallows appeared, a joyful sign of proper Spring in southern Wisconsin. They didn’t all settle in. There seemed to be some competition for nesting spaces, but at least 2 pair, probably 3, claimed the territory, and used the same nests built the previous year.

This year was a particularly good year for swallow reproduction. At least 2 broods of three were born and parents are nesting on at least 2 more broods of eggs this year. Given today’s explosion of the number of swallows on the wire and flying about, it’s been a banner year for barn swallows! I couldn’t be happier.

I had plans to make a small profit eventually from this small calm far. I’ve spectacularly failed to grow ginseng in the woods and, thus far, failed to grow and establish lavender from seed. I’ve also failed to market my very successful, organically grown, delicious garlic and Icelandic Sheep wool, but the wild birds are obviously thriving happy with their habitat. That’ll be fine. I bought this place to escape the city, to find peace in the country, first and foremost, and the numerous species of birds observed on my first exploratory visit convinced me this was the right place to be. Profit is so much than mere money.