Incendiary Lit

That You Arrive, Eventually, At the Insufficiency Of Just-Having-Been

by Anne Caston

The black-clad Amish walk, this August morning,
to the widow’s farm for the belling of the new bull.

Their daughters sing, their dogs bark
sharply, their sons strike stones with long sticks.

They pass her solemn house, its drawn shutters, black
hunting bunched at the gatepost, the porch

rail, the door. A rogue almond tree burns
gold and bronze beside the barn; the killed hog

swings from a bough of oak. Stiff sheets
sail on the line. The cock, sour

in his spurs, crows at nothing
and rushes the dogs.

And in her garden going to ruin: the shameless
blue stars of the morning glory blaze.

—

Amidst all the drabness implied, and the dark drab of the black bunting, this dreary colored poem contains some wonderful images and lines, but none better than the final image of the blue flowers against that mourning (this August morning). How shameless indeed! Wonderful. This poem was in Anne Caston’s collection Judah’s Lion which won the 2006 Cider Press Review Book Award. She is a core member of the faculty at University of Alaska at Anchorage’s low residency MFA program.

Posted: Monday, December 22nd, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Category: Poems, Poets.