YOKEL ( 22 ) ~

Stonemason Credo

Between talking to myself

While walking around

Choosing the right stone

And talking to myself while

Laying the stone as to what

Works right and doesn’t

I have enough company by

Myself not to have you who

Asks kindly if you may help

Back Road Archaeology

Every morning Native ate pancakes —

I would walk the mile north to his farm

To catch a ride with him to work,

Sat while he ate, looked out the

Thick plastic of his kitchen windows,

At the third chair — a plate of pancakes

For his son still in bed, 5:30 a.m.

On the way out the door, pulling

His heavy coat off a nail, Native

Tossed the paper plate onto a year’s

Worth of paper plates on the back porch,

Each licked clean by his dogs

Next month, in April, after half the

Junk has blown away from the farm

He will load what is left into a manure spreader,

Haul it down pasture to the old

Stone foundation where his parents

Once lived, throw it all in

An Old Timer

selling his tools on the lawn —

what pains him the most is

seeing them laid out that way

doing nothing

Chimney Fire

Climbing the roof

With a bucket of sand

Stars above bigger than ever

Gone

Some say they’ve moved out.

Gone. None of their kids are

Seen up at the school bus stop,

& I haven’t seen the VW without

Plates on the road, nor Native’s truck.

Gone. Born here, still young, married

& with the two kids, but now gone.

He was working in a garage outside

Of town until he got fired. They

Said he was doing well for himself,

Then he started to drink with the

Boys after work, got home past

Midnight — his wife stopped waiting up —

For months she would borrow a neighbor’s

Phone to call him, whisper pleas.

But now they’re gone. No kids at

The bus stop. Their dogs still prowl

& beg in the village, pick fights, bite.

One of them ate a turkey right off the

Back porch of a bountiful Thanksgiving

Day feast, months ago, before Native’s job

At the garage, before he came home

Drunk or stoned, before they were gone.

It’s still talked about.

I drove by their trailer today.

Place looked dead.

The door stoop was gone.

_____________

Bob Arnold

Yokel

Longhouse

2011

YOKEL ( 21 ) ~

To Build A Barn

To build a barn you need

Pallets, lots of them.

What do you mean pallets?

I mean pallets, that’s right —

Squared oak, ash, and beech slats

Found around factories, mills,

Trucking outfits, lumberyards.

Grimy, busted, smeared and

Heaped in piled debris, no one

Will argue if you want them.

So Everett’s wife brought a

Few home each day from the

Factory job tossed into the

Pickup truck and Everett

Would unload pallets

Everywhere — behind his house

And mother’s trailer, off to the

Corner pasture — and when

He had twenty he thought to have

Twenty more and when he stockpiled

Nearly two hundred he loaded

Each one onto his hay wagon,

Drove its bounty across the

Road and unloaded it all again

Where he would build his

Barn beside the brook.

You — who buy used barn board

At five dollars a foot and sound

Dry oak or chestnut timber

For post and beam structure

And have this idea that it

All takes money please take note —

Everett’s barn was built with 

Pallets, reused dimension and

Chunky hemlock framing milled

From his woodlot, built

In the worse conditions —

On a foundation that already had

One barn burn down mysteriously.

And after a full day’s work

We had the first floor deck

Finished in pallets and it

Snowed all the next day and

The next day after that we

Shoveled off the snow pad,

Went on building — kids and

Relatives handling pallets —

Bucket of all size nails

We dug into all day long.

That was living —

Since then, Everett finally

Gave up and moved away,

While the barn stands up

Ugly to everyone.





______________

Bob Arnold

Yokel

Longhouse

2011

YOKEL ( 20 ) ~

Names

Something happens to them —

They get sullen, country kids.

Not city kids who become country,

But true hicks, who smell of cowshit,

Skin like corn snow in March. We once

Knew a ten year old girl who would visit

Us, braids of sunny hair, who at eighteen was

Hair cropped and sallow. No matter how

Hard I looked I couldn’t find that

Ten year old we would meet on the back road

As she hiked home from school, jumping

Puddles, smiling into our eyes, never

A schoolbook in her arms. Most others quit

School by sixteen, get married and wreck cars

Through their teenage years and can

Rebuild an engine blindfolded, but are

Looked upon as stupid. Slow.

Who torch a vacant barn for kicks

Then join the Army, who look at tan

Whispery weekend girls like a bull at a

Fence, who get married and love their

Kids but piss on their wives; names like

Moose, Bub, Wally, they stomp around.

Mothers that raised them live next door.

Big Mouth

It really should be a simple rural life.

Most times it is, honest.

However, let me tell you about one

Secret meeting I went to once in a

Fine country home newly restored

With the best of apple cider served

By an open woodfire attended mostly

By men who had this great idea to

Save a local sawmill from any development

And the way proposed in whispers by these

Men with too much power elsewhere,

Was to arrange a midnight dumping

Of toxic barrels onto the property

And that should save our forest

River valley of any developers

And their kind.

Potatoes

Native, who was born in our house

And who couldn’t stand himself any

Longer that we were here and he wasn’t

But was a friend sort of anyway decided

One day to come visit with his tractor and

Put in a garden for us of potatoes right

Where he remembered his family once

Knew most of this land to be all potato

Fields and he sank into late Spring mud

And forgot the red oak trees were now

Fifty years older and taller and broader and

Not kind to sunlight where Native tilled

For a half hour getting nowhere but we

Let him do what he had to do 

______________

Bob Arnold

Yokel

Longhouse

2011

YOKEL ( 18 ) ~

B A S T A R D

Y O K E L

You shall know the truth,

and the truth shall make you odd

FLANNERY O’CONNOR

Men Without Women

What with two large

Barns, new garage and

100 acres of woodland behind

Him, Native’s gutted deer is

Hung from the front yard maple

Farmhand

Native is a farmhand

Always has been.

We don’t live that

Far apart, though

We’ve never met —

Rather seen each

Other’s face in a

Group and nodded

Hello. He lives with

His mother, never

Married and the

Last I knew he was

Working near town

Chopping corn and

Haying for a farmer,

Happy enough to do

That for twenty years.

But today I saw Native

On a back road tugging

A baler with an old

Tractor far from town

And that other farm —

It didn’t seem right

Seeing him way over

There, and even in a

Passing truck we were

Able to catch one another’s

Eye and nod. His face

Unshaved. All the fields

Nearby chopped and raked.

Killing in the Farmyard

It is no more than fifteen feet

But you should be closer —

Especially when using scattershot,

And same time in the morning as yesterday

They hear me coming, because then I shot

Their father or brother or uncle and I like

To avoid a face shot as I watch two bolt from

Compost to go under the chicken hut and one

Ditches into a hole without thinking while the

Other — the bigger one — pauses at the wire

Fencing and waits, curious as I am, actually

Turns around and almost sits up prairie dog style

It will have to be a face shot

If I blink — he’s gone

I’ve gotten this far stalking behind

A tree to a chopping stump and raising

Slowly I aim, he’s a dead-duck, and fire

He’s alive but looking at me his eyes are blood

I clean out a shell to reload and

Quickly finish the job

Each shot burns a whistle in the air

Wakes the dog, shakes the chickens, kills a rat

Old Hand

They wanted $100

For an ash pan

Imagine that —

Native took old scrap

Steel roofing and it

Took three hours

To flatten it out

Bend it around

But he made one

______________

Bob Arnold

Yokel

Longhouse

2011