The Day
by Mary
Swander
This is Michael Carey for Voices
from the Prairie a weekly sampling from the rich soil of Iowa’s literary
tradition. Today we will hear "The Day" from the multi-talented
writer Mary Swander who lives outside Kalona in a converted one room schoolhouse
in an Amish neighborhood. She gardens there and tends her animals when she is
not teaching literature in Ames. This poem is about weaning. How painful it
is to outgrow what we are accustomed to. How sad and self-pitying we get even
though the world we are growing into maybe richer and more beautiful than the
one we’ve known. It is true for us just as it is true for Mary’s goats.
The Day
The day you have to stay on the other side
of the fence, teat and milk still in sight,
brimful, hanging from the belly of your nanny.
How lovely her blue fur, brown eyes,
ears, stiff and white, flicking away flies.
How perfect the curl of her tail, the sharp
tips of her horns, the split of her hooves.
How you can still feel your head butting
her bag to start the flow, then how
everything moves, tongue pressed against skin,
mouth tilting up and up again. The day began
the same with the sun and corn, the rooster’s crow,
a quick leap from the woodpile, but one look
into that water pail was enough, your own
face blurring. This is it, kid, you’ve grown,
teeth too big for baby stuff. So quit your
moans and peek through the slats
at the wild grape just a neck stretch within reach.
What you don’t know, what you don’t know.
"The Day"
by Mary Swander from her book Heaven-and-Earth House published by Alfred
A Knopf also found in Voices on the Landscape from 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
Mary Swander is the author of three books of poetry, Heaven-and-Earth House (Alfred Knopf, 1994), Driving the Body Back (Alfred Knopf 1994, & 2001 U. of Iowa), Succession (University of Georgia Press, 1979), as well as a book of non-fiction Parsnips in the Snow (with Jane Staw, U of Iowa Press, 1990). An edited collection of nonfiction and art work on the Loess Hills, Land of the Fragile Giants (with Cornelia Mutel, U. of Iowa Press) was published in 1994, and a memoir, Out of this World, was published by Viking in 1995. Ms. Swander adapted Driving the Body Back to the stage and this piece, along with her co-authored musical, Dear Iowa have been produced across the Midwest and on Iowa Public Television.