—remembering ¬¬a farm foreclosure. For Darrell Ringer, 1953-93
“Thank you,” he said, while the black eyes drilled from the shadow of his ballcap as we stood in the sunbaked square of a Kansas town where we’d just rallied against such business as no one with honor should dare to defend—then drove over pocked macadam, between shoulders cascading with purple wildflowers, wheat turning green to gold—the field after field, the rich carpet called forth, turned over, culled with such care that I, for one, don’t have blisters enough to imagine— and beneath it the black earth seethes with world-feeding life. Then we arrived at his farm. Beautiful, I’d often thought, this life, how the green soybean hug at the earth and alfalfa explodes into pink and animals trudge toward us in the slow- motion rhythm of paddock-bound shadows until their heads hike up with quick interest when haybales are pitched with a thud between the tarnished steel rails of the crib. But the earth and its moods are uncertain, despite the disconsolate pleading it gets when sleep doesn’t come, that a storm please pass by without flooding at harvest; that a drought not set in, the wind not whisk topsoil to a powder-dry ash floating off in a glitter-filled cloud to the red of a summer-long sun. And of course words are addressed to the Notice of Debt that’s attached like a leech to the title, which is after all a mere sheet of paper approved by the courts but without the least smell of wet dirt to grace it. And of all he foresaw or was faced with, what he couldn’t agree to was losing this land without even a fight. They might take it all, but the fight, at least—they couldn’t take that.
Of David Salner’s sixth poetry collection, John Skoyles, Ploughshares poetry editor, said: “The Green Vault Heist is not only a beautiful book, it is great company.” Salner’s debut novel, A Place to Hide, won first place for 1900s historical fiction from Next Generation Indie Book Awards. This poem is reprinted from The Green Vault Heist. Both books are available on amazon or from the author dsalner@hotmail.com
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