Dear Ms. Rabbino,
Thank you for your letter, and I applaud your project as a means to raise funds for the International Rescue Committee to benefit refugee children.
You have asked me to give you a copy of my favorite poem. I have many favorite poems, but I read one the other day that is my current favorite and I thought you might wish to include it in your book. The poem, “In Black Earth, Wisconsin,” was written by Andrea Musher. I read it in a recently published anthology of poems by Dane County writers of Wisconsin. The anthology is called The Glacier Stopped Here, published by the Dane County Cultural Affairs Commission and Isthmus Publishing Company in 1994.
The poem is my favorite presently because it paints for me a picture of this very specific Wisconsin country. I get a clear picture of the farm, the mother and family and the graveyard at the top of the hill. It evokes for me a particular time and an almost unbearable emotional path that this mother and family have taken.
Poems are perhaps my favorite kind of reading because they encapsulate in a few descriptive lines a world — a world that I may never get to visit but which, somehow, recalls for me the common ground we all stand on.
All the best with your project.
Sincerely,
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