American Life in Poetry — Barn Clothes
Nov 15th, 2012 | By tfedderson2 | Category: 2012, American Life in Poetry, Issue, Nov. 15Our sense of smell is the one sense most likely to transport us through time. A sniff of fried fish on a breeze and I can wind up in my grandmother’s kitchen sixty years ago, getting ready to eat bluegills. Michael Walsh, a Minnesotan, builds this fine poem about his parents around the odor of cattle that they carry with them, even into this moment.
Barn Clothes
Same size, my parents stained and tore
alike in the barn, their brown hair
ripe as cow after twelve hours of gutters.
At supper they spoke in jokey moos.
Sure, showers could dampen that reek
down to a whiff under fingernails, behind ears,
but no wash could wring the animal from their clothes:
one pair, two pair, husband, wife, reversible.
Poem copyright © 2010 University of Arkansas Press, from “The Dirt Riddles” by Michael Walsh. Reprinted by permission of Walsh and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2012 by The Poetry Foundation. This column is made possible by the Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org) and supported by the UNL Department of English. This column does not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
– Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate (2004-2006)