Translink has a few feet of ad space on some buses dedicated to getting Canadian poets “published” or at least noticed. One day last summer I read this poem and thought it absolutely wonderful. Now I think I’m going to add the poet’s book to my list of interesting books to buy.
Excerpt from “Had I Stayed On The Farm” by David Zieroth
I married the skinny girl
and our kids ran free as chickens
one of them, the second boy
moving along the ditches for days
trapping muskrats and living on chokeberries and bulrushes
sleeping by a little fire of sticks
wrapped in his jacket, and we hardly noticed
he was gone until he returned
as someone else, burnt and smoky
his sisters silenced by the strides he took
to reach the pump, his hands
a mesh of little nicks and cuts where
the cries of the animals had entered him