This is Michael Carey for Voices from the Prairie a weekly sampling from the rich soil of Iowa’s literary tradition. Today’s poem is "My Daughter After an Illness" by the Pella poet Keith Ratzlaff. In this tender and beautiful poem. A father and child walk in the open air celebrating the miracle of new found health. In her child-like way the daughter officially blesses the birds as if she were St. Francis of Assisi. To the father, at this moment, it doesn’t matter what he owns, or has accomplished, or how much money he does or does not make --all that matters that one he loves has been kept from falling.
Today she is the saint of distance
watching the land run full tilt
away from her, off the edge of itself.
She throws her hands like paper
into the wind and they are held there
by some sort of miracle.
Seriously she blesses the birds
with what she has heard in church:
"And now in the name of Him,
who is able to keep you from falling…."
That’s all she remembers of it.
In an hour the sky will drop
around us. She doesn’t care
that what I own can’t go as far
as she sees. The fences are lost
in grass I haven’t mowed in a month.
I don’t care either. Today it is good
to have a child, to be part of something
unselfish, moving in as many directions as air.
"My Daughter After an Illness" by Keith Ratzlaff from his book Across the Known World published by Loess Hills Books of Farragut and originally published by Mid-American Review.
For Voices from the Prairie and Humanities Iowa, this is Michael Carey hoping you continue to hear the music blooming all around you.
Biography
Keith Ratzlaff was born in Henderson, Nebraska and holds degrees from Bethel College in North Newton, Kansas and Indiana University. For the past 10 years he has taught writing and literature at Central College in Pella. He is the 1996 recipient of the Ahinga Prize for Poetry selected by Robert Dana. His poems have appeared in numerous magazines and journals including: The Threepenny Review, Poetry Northwest, and The New England Review. He’s the author of two chap books: Out Here (State Street Press, 1984) and New Winter Light (Nightshade Press, 1994) and two books of poetry Man Under A Pear Tree (Anhinga Press, 1997) and Across the Known World, (Loess Hills Books, 1997)