Tribute – Rodney Nelson

one look at an outside wall of

the country house would have told me

that she had gardened

   he’d made art

because I had seen that trowel

in her hand and asked him about

that yellow ceramic fish with

wings of an airplane

       not that I

needed evidence having watched

the wetted hand of him on a

wheeling pot

   not ever an urn

as he plied in the studio

        having tripped

over a fork and

unreeled hose on the way to a

carp pool in which a leprechaun

with a yarmulke was wading

   been awed at

the size and taste of

the garlic she had meant for sale

their industries had conjoined here

in a handed-down old farmyard

on prairie of many weathers

but the raku fire went out

        the weed cart tipped

within not half

a year and the ashes of each

got an urn

   not one he had turned

and only my mind sees them now

Rodney Nelson’s work began appearing in mainstream journals long ago.

He lives in the northern Great Plains. Recently published chapbook and book titles are Metacowboy, Mogollon Picnic, Hill of Better Sleep, Felton Prairie, In Wait, Cross Point Road, Late & Later, The Western Wide, Billy Boy, Ahead of Evening, Winter in Fargo, Hjemkomst, and Canyon. See his page in the P&W directory: http://www.pw.org/content/rodney_nelson