Respite
by Ken McCullough

This is Michael Carey for Voices from the Prairie a weekly sampling from the rich soil of Iowa’s literary tradition. Today I would like to introduce you to Ken McCullough a poet last seen in the Iowa City area. His poem is called "Respite" and has to do with a couple of grisly, greasy pipe layers on break in the underbrush by a creek. One, of course, happens to be the poet himself letting the beauty of Iowa’s natural surroundings transform even his hard, exhausted and overworked heart.


Respite

noon on the pipeline—
  break for lunch
  from stringing pipe
  across a muddy creek

on the west bank
  Martin, our porky foreman
  snoozes off last night’s hooch again
  under an apple tree
  old and fully shaped

his face covered
  by his polka-dotted cap
  all but the stubbled
  double chin

I lie back
  against the tire of the compressor
  narrow my eyes
  against the sun
  and sip peppermint tea
wasp
  perches on the lip
  of my thermos

I look at Martin again —

  though it be mid-September now

 

 the apple tree is festooned
  with white blossoms
  and the empty field
  a riot
  of white and purple clover
Martin himself
  in a body 20 years younger
  glows
  with a clean light
  I can smell from here

 

"Respite" by Ken McCullough originally published in Abraxas and the books Travelling Light (Thunder Mountain Press) and later in Voices on the Landscape (Loess Hills Press).

For Voices from the Prairie and Humanities Iowa, this is Michael Carey hoping you continue to hear the music blooming all around you.

Biography

Ken McCullough’s most recent books are Travelling Light (1987), Sycamore (1991) and Plainsong (1996). He has received numerous awards for his poetry including the Academy of American Poets Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, A Pablo Neruda Award, and the Capricorn Book Award. Most recently, he received a grant from the Witter Bryner Foundation for Poetry to continue translating the work of Cambodian poet U Sam Oeur, survivor of the Pol Pot concentration camps. McCullough and U are also working on U’s autobiography and a chamber opera based on U’s poems, as well as a translation of Whitman’s Song of Myself into the Khmer language.

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