Poem 60 (Pandemic Day 64)

IN BLACK EARTH, WISCONSIN

thistles take the hillside
a purple glory of furred spears
a fierce army of spiky weeds
we climb through them
your mother, two of her daughters, and me
a late walk in the long June light

in the barn the heart throb
of the milking machine continues
as your father and brother change
the iodide-dipped tubes
from one udder to the next
and the milk courses through the pipeline
to the cooling vat where it swirls
like a lost sea in a silver box

we are climbing to the grove of white birch trees
whose papery bark will shed
the heart-ringed initials of your sister
as the grief wears down

this farm bears milk and hay
and this mother woman walking beside us
has borne nine children
and one magic one is dead:

                                                        riding her bike
                                                        she was a glare of light
                                                        on the windshield of the car
                                                        that killed her

a year and a half has passed
and death is folded in among the dishtowels
hangs in the hall closet by the family photos
and like a ring of fine mist
above the dinner table

we stand on a hill looking at birch bark
poking among hundred-year-old graves
that have fallen into the grass
rubbing the moss off and feeling for the names
that the stone sheds
we are absorbing death like nitrates
fertilizing our growth

this can happen:

                                                    a glare of light
                                                    an empty place
                                                    wordlessly we finger her absence

already there are four grandchildren
the family grows thick as thistle

—Andrea Musher

Poems for Life: Famous People Select Their Favorite Poem and Say Why It Inspires Them, Compiled by the Grade V Classes of the Nightingale -Bamford School, Arcade Publishing, 1995.  (Proceeds from Poems for Life were donated to the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, a division of the International Rescue Committee.)[Linked to written/audio text of the book]

This poem, the first in the book, was selected by Jane Alexander, (1939-) a remarkable author, Emmy and Tony award-winning actress and former director of the National Endowment for the Arts.  Her choice is an interesting one.  She selects a poem by Andrea Musher, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater (who a few years later became the poet laureate of the city of Madison.) Ms. Alexander's career had been on the east coast and the west coast, but this poem set in the heartland somehow reached her and grabbed her attention.

The first lines began with a military air: thistles taking the hillside--a fierce army of spiky weeds...What battle awaits the women mounting the hill and why are the men carrying on with the normal tasks of the farm?  We learn soon enough that the battle is with grief, the unspeakable grief of the loss of a child.  That one will never be won, but life will continue--already there are four grandchildren.  The last word is the same as the first word--"thistle"--the prickly truth about life.