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No More Chores

Text of Poem

The old farmer nurses rheumatic joints
in a wheelchair beside the window.
He watches spring come
with all the fullness thereof,
his eyes dim with the smoke of the past.

Memory plows the years
where he planted his future,
he feels between thumb and finger
the earth’s soft body, his inward eye
shines with banners of leaves
waving from cornstalks.
Each morning he wakes
from dreams of past harvests
roused by the cry of a cock pheasant
in a nearby field.

He stares as if the days ran backward
through a mirror, in the corner
a spider waits in her web.
He tastes dust in the wind,
feels stems grow in his fingers,
the distant yammer of a tractor
reminds him of hard-calloused hands,
he smiles as he nods off to sleep.

First Line
The old farmer nurses rheumatic joints
Original Pub Location
Original Publication Date
1978
Original Citation
Event: Journal of Contemporary Art 7 (1978) 61.
Republication
Complete Poems
378
Hearst Collections
Word Count
132
Poetic Form
open
Observations
Details experience of retired farmer in a wheelchair.
Themes
Twitter Quote
He stares as if the days ran backward / through a mirror, in the corner / a spider waits in her web.