Evidence
Doug Ramspeck
Nothing in the field but fireweeds.
Some
stray birches. As though the world
is
voluminous with emptiness.
The
great sea of prairie stretching out
beyond her barn. In the mornings
she rises and works for a time
picking fruit from her apple trees.
The
bees hover. Some of the apples
have fallen and are fermenting.
of
vinegar as dense in the air
as
the green muck growing on the surface
of
the pond. She tells herself she is
in
love with all of it: the bone-white
moon alone above the empty country
roads. The crickets and the chorus
frogs speaking to her late at night
while she is sleeping. As though
all distant voices are memories.
As
though the train rumbling
by
at night is what lets her know
that everything is far away. In the winters
she awakens sometimes to the great
veil of white covering the land.
Here
is evidence that she’s alive.
She
walks out into it. There are
her footprints leading to the barren
field then back. It is enough.
Doug Ramspeck’s poetry
collection, Black Tupelo Country, was
selected for the 2007 John Ciardi Prize for Poetry and will be published by BkMk Press (University of Missouri-Kansas City) in the fall
of 2008. His poems have appeared in journals that include
West Branch, Rattle, Confrontation
Magazine,