Timothy Applegate
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Back to Issue 6 |
The Wheat FieldWhat 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 MarriageHe 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 MaplesWords 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. ClearcutsIn 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.
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