A Poem for a Thursday #252

Joyce Sutphen grew up on a farm in Minnesota. She served as Minnesota’s poet laureate from 2011-2021. Sutphen worked as a professor at Gustavus Adolphus College. Her poetry has won several awards and has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion.

My father's farm is an apple blossomer.
He keeps his hills in dandelion carpet
 and weaves a lane of lilacs between the rose
and the jack-in-the-pulpits.
His sleek cows ripple in the pastures.
The dog and purple iris
keep watch at the garden's end.

His farm is rolling thunder,
a lightning bolt on the horizon.
His crops suck rain from the sky
and swallow the smoldering sun.
His fields are oceans of heat,
where waves of gold
beat the burning shore.

A red fox
pauses under the birch trees,
a shadow is in the river's bend.
When the hawk circles the land,
my father's grainfields whirl beneath it.
Owls gather together to sing in his woods,
and the deer run his golden meadow.

My father's farm is an icicle,
a hillside of white powder.
He parts the snowy sea,
and smooths away the valleys.
He cultivates his rows of starlight
and drags the crescent moon
through dark unfurowed fields. 

The Farm
Joyce Sutphen