Timothy Applegate

Back to Issue 6

The Wheat Field

What happened in the wheat field? 
          I heard the engine of a small plane sputter, then fail.
What did you do?
          I ran toward the fire, toward the flames.
What happened in the wheat field?
            A young girl, a child really, spoke in tongues.
And what did that sound like?
            A word-song. One part gospel, one part jazz.
What do you think she was saying?
            That a dying man must accept, even embrace, his terrible thirst.
What happened in the wheat field?
          After the fire was put out, horses gathered near the wreckage, no longer afraid.
Is all of this true?
            It’s my interpretation of the truth, my memory, what I saw that day.
What did you see?
            A child talking in tongues.
And what did that sound like?
            A river of words. A lineage.
A lineage?
            The stories we tell our children. What we pass on.
What happened in the wheat field?
            The pilot walked away from the plane, unharmed.
A miracle.
            No. Not that.
What then?
            I don’t know. Chance? Fate? A roll of the cosmic dice?
What happened in the wheat field?
            A small plane went down. There were some horses. The pilot walked away. 

 

A Marriage

He wanted to clear the hillside
so the water from the spring
could flow free again
could pool at the bottom into a bog
where he would plant comfrey
to make a poultice
for the fingers she pricked
filling pail after pail
with berries from the vines
he kept yanking
by their taproots
from the ground.

The Leaves of the Maples

Words fail, or the autumn light, bruised
by rain clouds, fades too early, or
their lovemaking fails, it’s too passionate,
it’s not passionate enough, her mind
is elsewhere, his body right there . . . As they rise
in the gloom of dusk, the man dressing
quickly now, impatient to return
to his file of poems, to the words
that lend his life shape and balance
when nothing else seems to, writing in the shadows
while the woman at the bedroom window
watches the leaves of the maples
fall soundlessly to ground.
 

Clearcuts

In the foothills above Patton Valley this morning
the clearcuts are buried
under a foot of new snow, last night’s rain
freezing in the upper elevations
while the lower hillsides remain stained
in the earth tones of those early impressionists
who concluded that in an age of photography
realism was obsolete – that no matter
how skilled the artisan, an image on canvas
would never equal, in clarity,
that same image on film – and so
portrayed, instead, the idea of essence: the lilies
in a pond or the trees in a forest
even when those trees are toppled in clearcuts
buried, this morning, under a foot of new snow.

Tim Applegate’s poems, essays, and short fiction appear in the Florida Review, The South Dakota Review, Lake Effect, and The Briar Cliff Review among many others. He is the author of the collections At the End of Day, Drydock, and Blueprints, which will be published later this year by Turnstone Books of Oregon.