Ancestor
J. Quinn Brisben
His bull-deep rough and loving voice
Is my first remembering (warm lap,
Vest scratch, glint of pinch-nose specs,
Magic tick of thick gold watch,
Iron mustache rusty with tobacco,
Smell of sweat, pipe, soap, leather, old man)
Rumbling of breeding stock, price of wheat,
FDR, old friends, the dust, tractors, heat,
Now and then echoes of the day before history:
Trail herds grazing where we now rocked, Indians
Bought off with lame beeves, still respected,
Not like their solid ghosts on the courthouse square
Squatting blank-eyed, pole-axed by change;
Cow towns shot up by rowdy saddle tramps
Whose sweatless, clean film shadows mock us,
Dealing death with practiced grace on turdless streets;
Soon land claimed in an epic rush, sod houses built,
Earth tied down with barbed wire, raped by plows:
Churches and jails, high-wheeled Fords in wagon ruts,
Wheat combines, radios, unions, DC-3s:
He did his best to welcome each new world.
Then times turned hard, rain stopped, dust came
Bringing gaudy sunsets, thieves with fountain pens.
He watched the women tack wet sheets
To staring windows, observed a new-made ridge:
Dust entombing a fence, watched families drift west,
This time without hope, squinted toward the sun,
Saw a pale dime in the noonday sky.
That last harvest was a dusty joke:
Eight bushels to the acre, two bits a bushel,
Dry grains pinging thinly in the hopper,
Then hauled to town and burned to drive the price up
While swollen-bellied children begged for bread.
That smashed old man who lived on pioneering
Died in a rage, still looking for a trail.
