Ode to the Palouse at Harvest Time<\/p>\n
The Palouse, Eastern Washington State<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the beginning the sky Today the wheat is ready, a thread The old Danes and Swedes The afternoon leaches Come sunset, an almost solid haze <\/p>\n Lorraine Healy<\/a> is an Argentinean poet and photographer living on Whidbey Island, Washington. The winner of several national awards, including a Pushcart Prize nomination, she has been published extensively. The author of two published chapbooks, Lorraine is a graduate from the M.F.A in Poetry program at New England College, New Hampshire, as well as from the post-MFA Program at Antioch University Los Angeles. Her first full-length manuscript, The Habit of Buenos Aires<\/a> <\/em>(Tebot Bach Press, 2010)\u00a0<\/em>won the Patricia Bibby First Book Award.\u00a0Lorraine’s newest chapbook, Abraham’s Voices,<\/em> will be out in October from WorldEnoughWriters Press.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ode to the Palouse at Harvest Time The Palouse, Eastern Washington State In the beginning the sky was blue and wheat was yellow, the clumps of sage were their exhausted green, and so the farmers said let the barns … Continue reading
\nwas blue and wheat was yellow,
\nthe clumps of sage were their exhausted green,
\nand so the farmers said
\nlet the barns be red, and the barns
\nwere red.<\/p>\n
\nbeyond golden
\nexcept a summer storm rages in its mess
\nof purple clouds and stops the day.<\/p>\n
\nare in the Farmers\u2019 Cemetery
\nwhere death suits their natural reserve.
\nGrey slabs for Petersens, Larsens,
\nfor every blessed Hanson.
\nAnd here and there, a perfect garland
\nsurrounds a lovely, tiny marble lamb\u2014
\nsplurge for a child of wheat-like hair,
\nstolen by diphtheria.<\/p>\n
\nthe rust of rain out of everything,
\nuntil the dry stubble
\nbursts with cricket and grasshopper.
\nAgain the world a spark away
\nfrom wildfire, one unconscionable
\nflick of lightning touching down,
\none idiot match flung out
\na car window and why
\ndo we call them wild
\nthese fires arsoned by thoughtlessness,
\nours, God\u2019s?<\/p>\n
\nrattles everything from here to the horizon:
\nthe chemical ghost of weedkiller,
\ndust from ten thousand fallow fields,
\nover the silos, over the Quonset huts,
\nover everyone\u2019s sins.<\/p>\n