I came upon you that evening a flash of fur darting across my path a red planet orbiting low at dusk sinews snapping into the set-aside-acres seeking shelter among the guardian arms of Chinese elms, red cedar, and undergrowth to nest with rabbits, and squirrels, and deer down on their haunches camouflaged and safe. What brings you this day to the creek on the other side of the farm far outside of your shelter the power drained from you bones your face haggard and drawn your eyes hallow, all alertness gone, unmoving where you stand as I pass? Why do you not run? What causes your unsteady feet to take you to the cool waters of the creek? Thirst? Fever? Rabies? Suicide? The splash of your last motion resounds in echo like a shot and after that, the silence of your body reverberates still the sanctity the broken continuity the loss of splendor that was you. Reprinted with permission from Nebraska Life Copyright © Sept./Oct. 2005 by Mel Krutz

WINTER WHEAT by MEL KRUTZ

The cold, brown earth, the gray, the tan, laid out on farmland all around awaits the snow of winter time. Amidst these fallowed fields and upturned rows, defiant of the ice to come springs up a sprightly virile green. In welcome of the winter wind it grows toward promise of the coming spring. My neighbor oversees its care, his form arthritic, bent, shaped to fit his aged tractor’s seat, and leaned toward oft repeated tasks: the hoists of bales, the scoops of grain, the tests of sod, and slop to hogs. With courage of the winter wheat in his aging veins, his back is further hunched to steep itself against the deepening frost. The contoured plow lines on his face are seasoned evidence that deep in him new grain begins its budding into beard readying for spring’s new energy and hope, the visceral power of the man and of his crop. Reprinted with permission from Rural Voices Copyright © 2002 by Mel Krutz Dirt Road Press

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