Rich Lutig
Rich is a professor of educational psychology and special education at Miami University in Ohio.

 

Fall Comes to the County

Around here you have to take
the towns where you find them,
each farm, each cross-county road
solitary and hermitlike, orphans
really, with only the abandoned
train tracks for familial company.

You can watch folks celebrate
the fall by climbing up ladders
and putting up the storms,
hoping to wait out those winds
and clouds so ready to throw out
winter from behind a sallow sun.

Clumps of bare October earth
or rows of aged bleached corn,
their wizened fingertips touching
the hands of their neighbors,
wait quietly until the end
of the month to give up the ghost.

Inside sentry farmhouses, old people
leaf through Florida travel books,
glossy RV brochures and dream,
while out in the yard, sullen ceramic geese
rooted to the soil, call to their brothers
so as not to be left behind.

Bus Station

The clock on the wall has lost so much time
you can almost set your watch by it
and the "home- made soup" sign
flashing in the coffee-shop window
has long quit feeling guilty about the lie.

It's hard when the busses stop
wearing the town's name like a headband.
Hard to admit that it has become nothing
but a place to pick up stragglers,
too tired, too numb or just too damn blind
to have packed up and called it quits
long before this. But tonight,

when he stumbles off to the sullen stares
of passengers eager to arrive
at their own lonely climes,
he'll grab his bag from the belly of the bus,
and hear his heeltaps on the scarred, grooved tile.

He'll wait for awhile (just in case
someone shows) on a ribbed-worn
wooden bench varnished smooth by years
of rough dungarees and held fast
with collective wads of ancient gum,
all the while trying to reduce memories
to a more manageable size.

Then he'll follow them out into the night,
towards the lone, single streetlight,
over by the curb stand,
searching, waiting for a cab that gave up
on his arrival a long time ago.

Evening In Ohio

Snap beans, ten minutes from field
to pot. Each county road a valley
of corn. Farmers at roadside stands
make the day's last sale.

The fields glow orange in sunset.
Then night. Soybeans are not interested
in a half-smiling moon but listen
to the sweet evensong of birds.

 

Decision

Snow road and fence posts
run together like familiar
lovers stealing night kisses
beneath the chaperone moon.
Out at edge of the farm,
the gravel glistening
with starlight, turns
its back and splits
east towards the darkening
windows of what's left
of the town, leaving
the rooted hedgewood
tangled in barbed wire,
alone now to fend for itself.