Michigan

Mark Connelly

Artifacts remain.

Sun-bleached and wind-splintered,

a harrow leans

against the sway-backed corn crib,

its empty cage

littered with dust.

Memory remains,

life was hard here.

The herd claimed precedence,

reigning with bovine majesty,

ordering our lives with

the listless urgencies

of feeding and milking.

I learned birth, death, and power here,

shoving the heavy beasts with child arms.

Knowledge was earth-bound,

touch and smell enhancing

farm-tech chemistry.

With the wisdom of surgeons, generals, judges

my grandfather fought the blight, fought the banks,

repaired machines and delivered calves.

Today there is stillness.

No one moves in the cow barns.

The processors, the separators,

even the well pumps are silent.

Behind the barns,

rancid lakes of dumped milk,

pyres of burnt feed.

Farther on, limed humps of earth

and shotgun shells

where the slaughtered herd

was bulldozed under

by men in hospital masks.

FDA inspectors

collect specimens

of toxic earth.

On the porch

my grandfather stares

at his harvest

and clenches his fist,

driving his blood

into government needles.

MARK CONNELLY’S poetry has been published in several anthologies and journals, including Bitterroot, The San Fernando Poetry Journal, Green’s Magazine, and Milwaukee Road Review. His most recent poems will be published in Eunoia Review in October 2024.