One of BJ Omanson's narrative poems from his 2019 collection Stark County Poems, has been featured in a two-page spread in the Amish agrarian publication, Farming Magazine. Although not a literary journal as such, the editor, author David Kline, considers poetry an important part of a fully-lived life and includes poems in every issue. Among the poets appearing periodically in Farming Magazine are Wendell Berry and former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser.
. And, later, as they It wasn't
that she, With his coffee gone,
stood
framed in the doorway, their talking done
and
he on his way to the barn, she told him,
"Wait
here a little," and disappeared back
through
the parlor, returning almost at once
to
place a few bills in his hand. She wished
to
ask him where he would go, to ask him
where
he was going the morning he passed
the
farm and had stopped to inquire for work,
but
she felt a reluctance to ask what he
had
not volunteered himself, and she said,
"I
am grateful to you for all you have done."
He nodded and thought once again of how
he had seen her that day alone in the
field,
doggedly heaving bales on a wagon,
and he asked of her, "How long can
it be,
with your husband dead and two hundred
acres
of corn coming on— how long can you last,
a woman alone on so large a farm?"
"For as long as Heaven
intends," she replied,
and he nodded once more and, squarely
placing
his hat on his head, made ready to
leave.
"Must you go just yet?" she
asked him softly,
"I have put on a pot of
coffee." He turned
and seemed for a moment to study her,
then once again took his hat in his
hand.
"You can sit on the swing,"
she motioned, stepping
back through the door. "I won't be
a minute,"
but when she returned with two steaming
cups,
she found him sitting instead on the
rail
with his back to the post. She smiled and said,
"Do you dislike comfort, Mr
McCann?"
He seemed to be gazing at something out
in the dark of the night. "I am fine," he said.
She
held out a brimming cup. "It is
strong
and
scalding," she warned, "and probably bitter."
He
took it with what she thought was a smile,
the
merest trace of a smile, and eased
a
savoring sip. She moved to the swing
and
sat on it lightly, holding her cup,
and
he saw how the simple hem of her skirt
swirled
once at her ankles and then was still.
From
somewhere out of the darkness there came,
from
a distant pasture, the melancholy
lowing
of a bull— and
she knew, however
long
before daylight she might walk out
to
offer him coffee or food for the road,
she
would find him gone and, struck by the thought,
she
asked of him quickly, "Where will you go?"
"West,
I suppose," was all that he said.
"Have
you no family?" There, it was out.
"None
that would have me around," he replied,
and
she knew by the way that he turned to look
at
nothing at all, at the empty night,
she
had asked too much, and she feared that he
would
rise to his feet and bid her good night,
but
he kept his place and, to her surprise,
looked
back at her gently. And what she said
next,
what
she found herself saying, was nothing that she
had
so much as thought: "I would like you to stay,"
and
she almost gasped to hear herself say it.
She
thought that she heard him sigh as he said,
"It
wouldn't work out." "I could
pay you more,"
she
countered at once, with a sinking sense,
but
he shook his head firmly. "It's not
the pay."
"Well,
what is it then?" and she heard in her voice
a
tremor of pleading and hated the sound.
"I
am sorry," she said. "I have
no right to ask."
He
sought for some word to reassure her,
this
woman with whom he had felt more at peace
than
with any woman that he had known,
but
the distance between what he felt somewhere
in
the depth of himself and the words he would need
to
tell of it here in this woman's presence,
was
a distance that he could not hope to bridge,
and
so he said nothing. Beneath the porch,
a
cricket began to chirr and they both
gave all their attention to it, keeping
their thoughts at bay.
now that the haying was done, couldn't
find
and hire some capable hand— it wasn't
a matter of labor or need— it was more,
more than she knew how to say, and more
than the circumstance that had led him
here
and just as surely would lead him away,
would ever permit.
he started to rise, so she left the
swing
and stepped up before him, taking the
empty
cup from his hand. He put on his hat
and regarded her for a long moment.
"I'll leave at
daybreak." She nodded, but found
there was nothing to say. "I have liked it here,"
he said, and started to say something
more,
but then merely tipped the brim of his
hat
and turned away toward the barn.
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