The Hayfield

         By Demod Smith

When a drunk enters a poem
best you can do
just edge him by the wildflowers
then let him flay as he will.

My drunk farms an Ozark hill
where midsummer storms                
lashed at him and his crops
until there was nothing

save a twelve-pack of bud
nearly done by noon
when the sun finally came out,
followed by wild blooms,

and then the farmer—
      his last can in hand—
headlong for the bloom-filled
humid haiku of a meadow                
at the end of a muddy lane.

One caesura.^[1] I plant it
in the mud of that lane
not to trip the farmer
just divert him. He stops, finds it

crunchy and suspicious
under his boot.
He looks around, behind,
leans back a bit, belches, turns

away from the meadow                    
and out of my haiku.
Instead, he staggers into the rain-
soaked hayfield and starts to laugh.

Laughs at the ruckus he’s causing,
at the belated sun, at himself. Arnold–
      his friends call him Arnie–
laughs at how wet his overalls are.
It’s not a pretty sight and nothing

he’d want his neighbors to see
or report. Hiding him, though,            
calls for what’s more crude,
less poetic license:

As I break open my pen
ink and night fall together
eclipsing his passage, my verse,
and our sun. For words of comfort

I’m thinking Blind Willie’s
“Dark Was the Night–
Cold Was the Ground,”
but this drunk farmer’s forgotten        

Willie and me. He does pray
every night before bed
which he recalls
as he falls backward

hands at his side, the old prayer
slurred, dopplering, and over
when he ___________________

What happens next and the final twenty-three stanzas of of Demod Smith's The Hayfield will be published as soon as his Survivors make a final Balloon Payment for these Posthumous Vanity Publishing services. So please check in again to Experience the middle and end of this epic poem.

[1] As a poetic device, the caesura is a rhythmic break or pause in the flow of a poem. Usually introduced in the middle of a line of verse, the caesura’s placement may be varied for different effects.

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