Each year, our youth group from church goes to a camp called UniDiversity. A good time is generally had by all.
This year, my son and I were picking up his supplies for the camp and he requested getting a case or two of Red Bull energy drinks. "Sure!" says I.
Well, apparently, mixing youth, caffeinated energy drinks and a long road trip is a poor idea. Or so I've been informed. Our lovely pastor and youth minister - chaperones for the trip - thought I'd lost my mind to do such a thing to them.
Upon arriving in North Carolina, the group spent some time with displaced Jeff Streeters, Greg and Terry. Greg penned the following poem in my honor.
He did a really great job of mimicking Wendell Berry AND of skewering a thoughtless dad. Check it out:
Mayhem of the Mad Farmer
for Dan Trabue
by Greg Yost
with apologies, I'm sure, to Wendell
His mind a hay wagon overburdened, axles bending under load.
Women in loose cotton (O Tanya!), herons,
That son of a bitch, Jayber Crow.
Too much! The cord binding reckoning to reason frays...
...snaps.
The tractor runs full throttle through the fence, shattering morning
calm.
The red bull tramples dawn's sweet clover.
Calves bawl.
Sown in caffeine, the fields bring forth their chatty harvest, bitter on
the tongues of the aged.
The Farmer's mind is dark, heedless of that pain. Hollow.
Journal of his mischief as yet unread.
Then a homecoming of friends. Where is a sequoia in which to hide?
This Farmer is standing in deep humus.
His stammered denial ("Why, I am not knowing too high a commuter")
Falls like dead seed on ruined ground.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy a woman satisfied to bear a child across
state lines?
Will this disturb the sleep of a woman near to sleep?
The dusty barn, grapes swelling on the vine,
Pigs in the farmyard, the laughter of old men who have known hard
work.
Cool breezes promising needed rain and the rich soil gathering it in.
Children, dogs, canning jars, draft horses, bees, and pickup trucks.
These and other rural things now bestow their gentle earthly wisdom,
alas, too late:
Watch your back, Farmer. Payback is hell.
3 comments:
Hysterical!
Isn't that a dead-on send-up of Berry? PLUS the beating he (lovingly) gives the Mad Farmer for his Mayhem?
One question I have: Why, "That son of a bitch, Jayber Crow"? You out there Greg?
Well, I know that Jayber Crow is the title character in one of Berry's novels, but I mostly know Berry's work as an essayist and poet. In fact, I discovered his collections of essays (e.g., What Are People For?, The Hidden Wound, The Unsettling of America, Home Economics, Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community, Another Turn of the Crank, Citizens' Dissent: Security, Morality, and Leadership in an Age of Terror, and Citizenship Papers, to name only the most important) long before I ventured into his poetry or novels. Poetry is difficult for me and my tastes in fiction tend toward the fantastic or to detective fiction. Realistic rural novels are harder for me to get into, even when the writer is as gifted and powerful and Berry. But he has proven to be worth the effort.
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