The poetry in Daniel Smith’s book “Ancestral” reflects on life and farming in the Driftless area of southwestern Wisconsin. WPR’s Tim Peterson spoke with him about his poetry in the early spring in his barn near Arena, Wisconsin.
Smith shared three poems about heritage, loss and an appreciation for the wild.
===
Anvil
I’ve hauled my father’s anvil
due north
up out of the black Illinois farm ground
he and I together worked,
decades our home.
Set down sixty pounds
onto the floor of this old barn,
new only to me.
All around, our bewildered tools
hang in the strange light
of the cracked windowpane
where I stand
looking out over land
not yet home.
It is growing late
on a late winter’s day.
At my feet, my father’s anvil,
his striking song of steel on steel
still hammering home.
Daniel Smith. Photo by Tim Peterson
===
A Farmer Dies in Springtime
Home from the hospital
To a bed
With a view of the fields.
Tended by hospice,
Who arrive morning and night,
Like a hired man come to chore.
Neighbors stop by, sit bedside,
Stare into their hands,
Red and cracked from winter.
They recall the year
Of the early frost, flood
Or big drought.
They avoid talk
Of the plowing or planting,
Of the futures for cattle or corn.
The tractor, disc, and planter
Stay locked in the shed
With seed bought months ago
When the new catalogs arrived,
Glossy with promise and primed
For a year that would not be.
===
The Red Fox
I saw a red fox
drinking from the horse pail
in the pasture
south of the barn.
A winter sunset blazed
upon his hide
and his black ears
pointed toward the early stars.
Suddenly aware, he bolted
for the dark woods
but I did not follow.
It was enough
to know he exists,
to know this world
still shelters
the rare and the wild.
Daniel Smith at his farm in Arena, Wisconsin. Photo by Tim Peterson
This story was inspired by a WHYsconsin listener question on WPR’s “Central Time.”
