for Barney Bush
The heat of the Midwest night fills with the hush of elms
weeping in the bluest of shadows,
their limbs cavernous as Jesus' limbs must have been,
while two lovers liberate themselves in the grasses
and the vegetables converse in small support groups
about the catastrophe of their ensuing deaths
and the sky gushes and the lilies of the fields tremble
in the diminishing angle of hours when nursing homes buzz
and the aged fumble their way through halls
to a numb white oblivion like melancholy gondoliers
lumbering under the stars that bend to the effort of their groans,
and when the grandmothers of this universe,
who are the real professors of history, fall off their pillow-cliffs,
their bangled durable prayers howl through the night's inky branches,
their history blasts down the hard sidewalks,
and their wishes go more or less unobserved,
at 4 A.M. on a grainy morning in Northfield, Minnesota.