blue skies poetry

1.
first    the farmsteads 
slip under 
to wind or     drought 
            spring clapboard warping 
            lichen like sparrowprint

towns taken      gradually
limb by limb                  feed & tackle
dry goods    when the 
post office goes it’s done for
takes years    though    before
the church windows vanish
someone brave or
desperate enough
& then scrapboard blinkers
bell tower gone to pigeons
2. 
what the posters showed 
wheat   & sky
the bushel bins 
full to overflowing
reality
high summer    Battleford
            cyclonic dust &
            missing chinks    
grit a constant partner
standing            she raises
her hem from the floor
leaves a perfect negative of
bleached pine
he      hawks dust               polishes
the flintlock & hangs it
above the door
all day
the brightness goes out of it
like a veiled eye
3.
two days ago
he loaded the rifle         palmed
his way along the storm line
to the barn
inside     five roans
lean & hard as oak
   in the kitchen     she laid the table
   turned plates like white moons
incendiary sunset     the horses
wild & rank with fear
scenting death     powder
rifle not for them
for him
4.
in front of the house    the yard
gives way to prairie grass
            fescue & grama
distantly    the church
knuckles under like an old woman
steeple sloughed and rotting
she finds it
nestled in a pucker of earth
            slim    pale rock
            imbued with kingfisher light
I-nis’kim      buffalo stone
promise of plenty when
the town has gone      the church
down to staves
pray that you will not starve
& the buffalo will come
sun in weals over napped ground
stunted barley
you will not starve

come
            pray

~ Jenna Butler

Jenna Butler is an educator, book reviewer, editor and poet. Her work has won a number of awards and has been widely published in literary magazines, journals and anthologies in North America and Europe. She has edited over twenty collections of poetry in Canada and England, and is currently working toward a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of East Anglia, UK. Her new collection of poems, Forcing Bloom, is forthcoming from Mercutio Press. Butler lives in Edmonton, Alberta with her husband.

Filed under: Jenna Butler by akublik Date 10 March, 2008