Pheasant
by Juliet Kaufmann
Mattila
This is Michael Carey for Voices from the Prairie a weekly sampling from
the rich soil of Iowa’s literary tradition. Today’s poet is Juliet
Kaufmann Mattila who worked for 23 years in Iowa City as a university administrator
proving that one does not have to be a teacher or a student to write well and
to move others. There are as many types of writers as there are people living
in this world and there’s no reason every one of us can’t be sensitive,
intelligent and articulate. Although after her recent retirement she moved with
her new mate to Connecticut, as you shall hear, she continues to write very
effectively about the land and the life she left back in America’s heartland.
Iowa is one of our nation’s most fertile habitat for pheasant. In season,
hunters come from all over the country to Iowa for the privilege of shooting
them. Indeed at the right time of year, it’s almost impossible to drive
some of the state’s back roads without accidentally hitting one or at least
scaring a few of them up out of the tall grass of the roadway ditch. In this
poem Ms. Kaufmann’s sleigh does just that and she rushes to the aid of
a poor frightened bird before the dogs can get to them. In thanks, they speak
to her in a different kind of language and leave her with the little lift in
the dead of winter that she had been hoping for.
Pheasant
After the others
scare us, bursting
into the wind,
you stop the sleigh.
The horses rear
and plunge, remembering
wings, wanting
us to be
lighter than air.
The dog hears her
under the snow.
I run to the drift
before he can
lift her.
She is light.
She has closed her yes.
Before you can say throw her
over the fence!
she disappears,
leaving my fingers
covered with feathers.
"Pheasant" by Juliet Kaufmann
originally appeared in Voices on the Landscape published by Loess Hills
Books.
For Voices from the Prairie and Humanities Iowa, this is Michael Carey hoping you continue to hear the music blooming all around you.
Biography
Juliet Kaufmann Mattila lived in Iowa for 23 years before retiring as an administrator at the University of Iowa and moving to Connecticut in May, 2000. Many of her poems use the rural landscape of Iowa as their subject matter.