My Blog

Description of my blog

Poetry	1 Jun 2008
Giving Iowa a Try by Rustin Larson

Here are some drafts from my journal, a small burst of mid-winter 2008 creativity.

This one is a memory from when I was an adult educator at health care facilities in the 1990's:

COLLECTOR OF AUTHENTIC ARROWHEADS

There isn't enough of me. The summer

night washes over this tiny town

in a hue of periwinkle. A man and a woman

hold hands on the bridge. What percentage

of night do they walk through? How much the sea

of breathable air do their bodies cut?

Is there a barely visible tapestry

trailing behind them now?

Later in the notebook, here is a single line I like:

Am I a memory for my tie?

I visit the doctor many times a year. He's a nice guy. He plays the bagpipes in his free time and has kids about the same age as mine. This one is for the Doctor:

My doctor thinks the first snow of the season

raises my blood pressure because I'm a poet

and I get all worked up about snow.

Sometimes I feel like the town fool;

there is no secret I can keep; my dignity

is gone; I drool openly; no one has the heart

to shoot me. I must drift past all the windows

like a ghost again (that is my only hope) keep

counsel with disembodied spirits,

the secrets breathed inside empty laudanum bottles.

Curious laughter of forsythia, blasts of trumpet

vine, I cannot hear you because this is winter

and my heart works hard to translate

its pure music.

And here's one about quitting time, written in early February, 2008:

I'm planning on going home, taking my tie off

and watching a Marx Brothers' movie. I am taking my tie

off, feeling my shirt, feeling myself inside

my clothes. I am watching, listening for the dance

of words, laughing, feeling where I am in my body--

a click left of the liver?-- I have awareness

in the soles of my feet. I am home, I'm going

to fork some vegetables in my mouth; I'm going

to say Aha! to that sensation left of my brain.

I will drink the liquid and laugh, feeling my body

grow tired, trying to ignore, ignore, ignore.

I'm home with my wife and my children,

with the few people who would do as I ask--

(I'm not certain there is a holy river)--

to what's left of me after the fires--

the last fires, the late fires, not the fires that kept

us warm, not those that flamed green and then

yellow at the vision, the prediction, the mapping

of this life.

The next one has a title. I'm thinking maybe of my daughter Sarah, and maybe a little bit of a dear friend who, at times, seem like a daughter:

THE HILL

From where you are, with your waterproof pants

on a toboggan, and the sun bleeding snow-ward,

can you hear me today, my soft thoughts

knowing who you are finally, the snowfall muffling

every shout and blue jay cacophony? I like this,

finally, letting you go to be who you are, down the hill

racing the cold and entering its mouth simultaneously,

the lights of your disastrous city announcing supper

hour, and the restaurants simmering and stirring

their vats of carrot and potato stew--

a fine steam that melts the sky into proper darkness--

and I pray for you.

Finally, if Iowa becomes a breakaway republic, I propose that The Music Man become its official national masterpiece of musical literature. We can extract our national anthem from somewhere within it, I’m sure. This poem plays on some stubborn Music Man energy, or so I hope. Yes, I am being judgmental and critical. Yes, I know we are not all plain vanilla, but sometimes we act like it. And ugly is a strong word. But that’s just my point. It’s STRONG!

WE IOWANS ARE A PROUD, UGLY PEOPLE

Our ancestors

Took off for the prairies

Where they would only see

Themselves.

Fair enough.

When I am sure they

Are good and starved,

I feed the sparrows.

When their mischief

Is expended under the eaves,

The squirrels get grain.