Windrows

from Field Stones
by Robert Kinsley


Already the air
Three, or four times if we were lucky
my father would enter the field, summer,

the mowing machine with its sidecar ready
for the timothy and alfalfa, the clover in full bloom.

And the rows would go down, a circle into
a circle, into a circle, until there was nothing left,

the way I supposed the Indians fell in the great Midwest,
tribe after tribe, the men, and women, the children

in their huts and long houses, cut down like so many
rows, year after year, in this very place where we are.

Where, later, I or my brother would turn with the rake
the circles of damp dark blossoms, windrows,

lifted and tamed, the wilderness dries out of them.
Later we'd toss the bales from wagon to barn,

Certain in our ability, free from the fear of fire
that claimed each year a barn or two--

Ohio, named by you, for, and now without you, still
smell of clover, small flame shinning, wild dark men.