A Belonging Field

I missed a poetry reading I would have liked to go to at the local college, because it was the same evening as one of our final rehearsals for the symphony's performance of Mendelssohn's Elijah (with the college choir). Although it's only the middle of the quarter at the college I commute to, it's the last week of the semester at the local college, so I'm spinning in a whirlwind between the two.

During a lull between the gusts of wind, I went to the local college bookstore and bought a volume of poetry by the poet I didn't get to hear, Andrew Grace (another of the many people who have passed through the local college). The volume is entitled A Belonging Field. One of the poems, in particular, struck me. Partly it's because of this post over at Life In Scribbletown and this post of mine, written the same day. Partly it's because my four cats have begun to go outdoors and wreak havoc on the mouse, shrew, and chipmunk population. And partly it's just spring, when a commuter's attention is seized by the number and variety of fresh corpses spread around on and beside the road. Season of new life, yes, but so many incautious new lives.

Buzzard Song
Anderson's Steel, Rantoul, Illinois, 1952

Tonight the moon is a punched-out hole
in a paper sky as I solder rebar

in this sweatbox, vesuvian neon
sputtering over a vast, concrete floor.

In the sky, a single buzzard undoes entire clarities,
bits of dark granulating behind its orbit,

splinter lodged in the heaven's bleached & dripping eye,
unloading earth's material measured in flesh & bone.

I want to say thank you, Death's Grunt,
for eating those that eat their young, hooking open

the seam between blood & rebirth. Someone has to do it.
Time is a whirligig hooked in my mouth,

my match-red face like yours. The next time you take
unimaginative pleasure in tearing something apart,

do it for those of us with six hours left on a shift,
darkness' paraphernalia dangling like opossums

from the branches. Disposability's Hound, unbless
this fallen deer until nothing earthly could put it right again.

I love the phrase "Death's Grunt." It reminds me of the guy in the movie Miss Firecracker whose job was to pick up roadkill. What a job! Even my part-time no-prestige jobs seem better in comparison.

One time a group of my friends began telling each other what jobs they felt least suited for. One, who was in a bad wreck as a teenager because of falling asleep behind the wheel, said truck driver. Another, an idealist, said prison guard. Being from a long line of fairly flat-chested women, I said topless dancer. Think about it--what job are you least suited for? And is the field you're in worth so many hours of each of your springs?