April in Elysian Fields Quarterly, The Baseball Review: HOT STOVE ISSUE, Vol. 23/No. 1 • 2006
Lyric Poetry in Zone 3, Spring 2003
The Wind-Up, the Delivery, in Dogwood
Prof. Jay Hill's Web Page

NORWEGIANS IN LATE AUTUMN, THE UPPER MIDWEST

Not everyone grows up in
in corduroy & flannel,
leather & wool,
but those of us who did
remain transfixed
by late autumn,
season of sorrow
& sorrow's strange elation,

that time of year
our ancestors
are thought to have
loved & hated, tending,
their tales suggest,
to violent mood swings
but also speechless
with joy to have

tasted summer's glory.
Those old Norwegians,
we learned at table,
seemed keen on the
experience of loss,
throngs of them
hunkering down to
drink & think of what

might have been.
Having reached
the shores of paradise,
they beat north-northeast
for home & carefully
misfiled the charts.
Not until centuries later
did descendants wagon in

to the territories―
Iowa, Minnesota, Dakotas―
where, the family joke had it,
they encountered a climate
more unforgiving than
that they'd forsaken
& settled down,
happy at last.

So as kids we were taught
to applaud November's wind
for skidding tears
along bright cheeks
and tearing the leaves
from the branches.
Late autumn in our Midwest,
the harvested fields

would darken so fast
only the thought
of hot coffee &
sweetrolls slathered
with butter
could make our
tall grandmothers
believe in tomorrow

& someday, god willing, spring.

April in Elysian Fields Quarterly, The Baseball Review: HOT STOVE ISSUE, Vol. 23/No. 1 • 2006
Lyric Poetry in Zone 3, Spring 2003
The Wind-Up, the Delivery, in Dogwood
Prof. Jay Hill's Web Page