Two Poems
by Ryan Harper
Impressions of September Corn
I. Ohio
Yellow in blue rinse
the ears dry on the stalk;
in a flinty wind whisps
the first silk—lengthening.
Slow along the turnrow
the shadow grower
tugs a tassel—crisp aurora
of the drawing month
pulled up to its end.
Rich with hours, late
of harvest, he gums
to vellum the shade,
the skylight off the stalk,
strains in plain air—
where September works
by the stroke, the utter
kernel, lone tones
dampening the field.
II. New Mexico
Pace
the old and known furrows
some plants will
grow
beyond the standing binders:
parallel
sand
and rock thick gold stalks
broach, ragged,
gray
moon presses bright through
blue morning
weeds
garrisoned along the outcrop—
survivors—
tend
close whatever fields near tassel
in sweet soil—
grind
the heritage strain the mash
consummate
fire—
whorling azurite headland
rifts layer
black
gods rising scorian—
September
stalks
staggering beyond tassel
transfigured
He-Balsam
A green more swole
a twig hairier
red spruce climb mount desert
island sola cistic wind
in the tonewood sounding
what nature a marked trail
passes, acadian
blush and bubble, half
a giant, fey to the craton
cruising the orogen
to stand him a stroke
I meet this painted body
in the granite green deep
erratic rusticant
singing the glacial polish
keeping declensions easy
as the spruce shade red.
Ryan Harper is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Colby College’s Department of Religious Studies. He is the author of My Beloved Had a Vineyard, winner of the 2017 Prize Americana in poetry (Poetry Press of Press Americana, 2018). Some of his recent poems and essays have appeared in Kithe, Consequence, Fatal Flaw, Tahoma Literary Review, Cimarron Review, Chattahoochee Review, and elsewhere. A resident of New York City and Waterville, Maine, Ryan is the creative arts editor of American Religion Journal.