At the Perky Pot
They gather here once more after Herbert’s service,
their meeting site this pockmarked window table
where they come to talk around nine most days
since they sold their farms. Tree shaded lawns
became new families’ backyard pools, their barns
just parking spots for leisure toys. Their tractors
gone. Old bailers gone. Now, Herbert too.
They sit beside the bird-spotted glass and watch
occasional cars pass by, their minds at work
recalling the fragrance of diesel fumes and dust,
of freshly turned soil, the sweetness of dried alfalfa.
In clean flannel shirts and pin-striped Carhartt overalls,
thanks to daughters who now watch over them,
they grieve for lost mornings when breeze and sun would stroke
their cheeks and soothe sore bones back in John Deere days.
*
Jerry Krajnak is a Vietnam veteran who later survived forty years in public school classrooms and collected degrees from UW Eau Claire, Wichita State, and the University of Kansas. He shares an old cabin in the North Carolina mountains with rescue animals, grows heirloom tomatoes, and writes a little. Recent poetry appears in Star 82 Review, New Verse News, I-70 Review, Autumn Sky Poetry, Rat’s Ass Review, SBLAAM, and other journals and anthologies. You can see more at jerrykrajnak.com.
