
Crowstep
poetry journal
Journal Entry: Foresight
Every spring,
my grandfather burned
a pasture,
scorched and blackened
thistle and fleabane right
to the tree line
where mice
and bees escaped
the slow advance
of low flames.
It was the end of the world
in increments,
the ragged
approach of a god’s wrath.
But which god
I couldn’t say.
The god of fescue, the god
of meadows,
the god of grazing?
All season long, resurrection
broke out
all over the field.
Later, cattle survived on this
manna, the small herd
my grandfather kept,
some for milk, some for meat.
I never saw
​
the slaughter,
the sacrifice, except when
squirrel hunting,
my father
made me help him
skin the creatures,
their gray pelts
limp on the ground. But that was
autumn, after
the garden’s
last harvest, tomato vines
brittle as bones,
corn stalks cackling
with a touch of wind. Every day,
a little closer to firelight
and superstition,
I thought this was how
witches were born,
from the uncut
fields of corn, a spell
cast under
a lagging moon,
the shadows of papery leaves.
I thought
bad luck
was a matter of misreading signs,
first frost
six months
from first thunderstorm.
Wisdom and witchery
were the same,
honey for bee sting,
vinegar for wasp,
grab your earlobe
to stop the pain of a burn.
I watched
my grandfather
beat the fire out with a shovel,
throw buckets of water
to drown the embers.
I watched smoke rise
through branches
and leaves.
There was nothing on earth
could catch it.
​
David B. Prather is the author of We Were Birds. He served as a juror for Ohio State Poet Laureate Kari Gunter-Seymour’s anthology, I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing: Ohio’s Appalachian Voices. He serves as a reader for Ember Chasm Review. His work has appeared in Colorado Review, Prairie Schooner, and many other journals.
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