A Song of My People
       

The people I've tried to sing of
never cared one whit

and turned back to camp fires
and bean rows and whatever

sadness lay deep in their thoughts.
There were shut-ins to look in on

and someone's fallen tree
to cut and haul away.

And had I asked what question
follows all their days,

they would have thumped me good
and spent no time explaining why.

One would have motioned
hand me that wire-cutter

and another trembled
a rolled-up cigarette to his lips

and shook his head at nonsense.
They've all been gone for years,

for that's the one true answer
to any question, but mornings and evenings

I hear them rattling around inside me,
tool shed carpenters shoring up steps,

hatchet throwers and pool sharks,
old men rummaging coffee can catch-alls

for a lugnut or washer, a wheat penny,
a buckeye, a cave-found fossil.

They make a song of searching after
sawblade files and needle nose pliers.

A note goes high, then low,
contemplative as an eddy,

some long-gone lonesome hinge
on a hayloft door; and I move to speak,

to say their time and place, the words
of who we were and came to be,

and one goes silent as he always did,
and another slams a tailgate shut,

and one leans down to hook a chain
to pull someone from a ditch,

and one nods and shrugs his chin
and lets that be a sort of answer.

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Copyright © 2021 Jeff Hardin All rights reserved
from Twelve Mile Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission