My family came from farms in eastern North Dakota. This is my grandpa Anton Theodor Rasmussen on his farm in 1925.
Homefield
Farming
Windmill
Chopping Block
Dakota Thunderstorm
Authority
Storm Fence
Homefield
Here, in this homefield, in easy earth, I lay my line. I set my point And let the reins ride loose about my neck, A ring of real power. Gird and girth, Hame and holy harness, rivet, joint, Straps stripped of guide and check. How hard these breathings! How the furrows swell! How words grow short and stout! What plod And stride divide this little plain! And finally how wonderfully and well This secret bed, this loose and limpid sod Receives all seed and seals itself again!
Feed shed on my uncle Norman’s farm
Farming
We were all farmers, we all knew weather Like we knew our own relations, like we Knew the path the cows came down together When it was time for milking. I can be A farmer now, urge the earth to grant me Ways to be wordworthy, fit to gather What has come from words, to set them free To lie and sprout in fertile fields. Whether I farm as my fathers farmed, with leather, Wood, nickel buckle, trace and whiffletree, Or plow and sow with inkpen, I’d rather Know their lines and mine. I want to see My footsteps follow theirs where horses plow And sweat. I want to make their then my now.
My grandpa Anton Theodor Rasmussen, 1925
Windmill
The milkcans stood in water to their waists Within the wooden tub and you could smell the tang Of sour milk and hear the creaking of the vanes Above. They climbed the wind, hand-over-hand, To drive the clanking rod that cranked the cool Out of the earth. On that August noon You could feel the heat right through the door As if the air were burning up. This dim damp space, Its steel pipe, its sweating circular tank Holds milk cans, butter tubs and a machine That creaking, shakes and shivers underground Cold water up to the pumphouse. It rolls Out in the fiery air a cold cone Of earth and water. Here is balanced force.
My grandma, Julia Larson Rasmussen with my oldest sister Arlene, 1925
Chopping Block
See this stump, this stub, this late Reminder of late life, this block Where necks were stretched to separate The serpent head from bloom and flock. See this hen, she stands where blood Is dried and gone, where the axe bite Has healed. She ruffles up her hood, And nods and blinks and dreams of flight.
Dakota Thunderstorm
Black, bruise blue, purple, stonewall prison grey, Morning clouds crowd between high heaven’s brow And the bluff where bison died. I see how This storm storms the prairie. I know the way Wet weather works. I see how quickly day Descends to dark, how pressure pulls its plow Through shocked air, how grain and grey grass will bow And bend when the storm comes marching. I stay In. The sun sinks. Water walks on baled hay. Light links low and high. Light links here and now. Light leads loud down to where my ears allow It entrance. Then at last the rain will lay Its hard hand on the roof and I stand under Lightning’s neat knife, hammer blows of thunder.
Authority
When Norman sent me for the cows I couldn’t bring them in. They stood As if they had all day to browse The short grass down, as if they could Graze all the way to China. When I hollered, some of them would swing Their huge heads round and stare and then They’d swish and stamp and blink to bring My eight years into focus. Damn! I had to go and get the dog. And everything I think I am Still sees them file out of the bog Down by the stockpond, up the hill, Back to the barn, the dog behind, And I behind the dog. I still Remember how he made them mind.
Me with my first nephew Roger Backen at the Backen farm, 1945