A Month in the Country
Fifty
years a country doctor,
Grandfather
began with buggy rounds,
and
died the year the H-Bomb
vaporised
its first atoll.
He
knew a sugar pill and company
could
cure the hypochondriac old ladies, starved
for
talk on lonely farms –
for
others, called cancer what it was,
delivered
half of Mason County’s babies, or
knelt
in autumn fields
to
saw the leg the thresher
only
half took.
Even
Grandma called him Dr Pollock.
*
Late
‘41, a fortnight after ‘Pearl’
my
Father volunteers, makes Sergeant in the Signals,
between
basic there and shipping-out,
the
telegram to Grandma with the news,
BESS
AND ME MARRIED TODAY TAMPA STOP MY
UNIT
NOW
ON MOVE TO (censored) STOP
BESS
ON KENTUCKY TRAIN TO YOU FOR WAR STOP
…
four years hoeing Grandma’s garden – the corn
grown
seed-to-shuck, months
between
the letters back from ‘Billy’.
*
My
sister and I were a month at the old place,
summer
1955, the chores unchanged, the beanpole’s shadow
still
long across the rows, the salt crust of smokehouse hams
as
bitter, or from the well’s cool depth,
memory…
*
Others,
too, passing…
*
This
wedding ring was hers, inscribed from Billy
the
middle of last century, then
in
widowhood to me, its repair
made
so,
just
here, to bridge the space her swollen joints demanded,
yet,
the names and wedding date
now
part obscured, a broken orbit
round
the empty ‘O’.
In
my hand, a month in mind, a dynamic of memory
dutiful
in the jeweller’s weld,
lost
time polished to a seamless fit.
*
Seasons
are lent, the trellis of roses
sheltering
the view to the cemetery lane.
Climbing through another summer, those
bright reds were Mother’s favourites, as here,
circling and circling, this hallmark
binding flesh.
McDill Field, Tampa, Florida, March 5, 1942
Dear Aunt Maud I got your letter today. The candy was
fine. And the tobacco, from Daddy I reckon. I wish you could be here to enjoy
this good weather. When the war is over and if I get back I will make my home
here. Bess has never been to Florida. She is coming down the first weekend in
April and stay a week. We’ll get married then maybe. She sure is a funny girl.
She cries sometimes. Like when I call her up sometimes she cries. She reminds
me of you, she is so quiet and gentle. I had a gang of 25 men working the line
this afternoon. The Lieut. don’t know anything but what he reads in a book. You
have to have done a thing before to understand how to do it. Such a bunch of
bone headed Yankees I never did see. Tell Mother to open my bag before my
clothes rot. Edwin can have anything I got if he wants to. The flowers are
pretty in town now. We get plenty to eat, and no grit in the food much.
Will write soon,
Billy
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