KENNY'S ISLAND

Kenny Black

stood seven feet tall, lived

in a wood shack with his wild-eyed wife

and equally wild-eyed daughter, and farmed

a hundred acres of disaster at the end

of a two-rut road, passable by horse and sleigh

or wagon most of the year, by tractor

for seven months, and by his beat-up Nash

two-door for maybe four

in dry years


He was among the poorest of the poor

as each year brought spring too late

and frost too soon and rust and blight

and hoppers, but like many others,

he had three suits of clothes; his

over-alls for work, his over-alls for town,

and shiny black suit for funerals. His John Deere "D"

tractor, hung together with rusted bolts and wire,

ran as good as any, pulling his

mish-mash of second-hand machinery

slow but sure through the good ground, going round

the alkali by the sloughs, where he harvested

the sharp swamp hay for winter.




His four-room house is best described

by the little that it held;

the kitchen hand-pump above the wooden

wash-stand didn't work; the handle used for

drying dish-rags. Hot water came from

the reservoir; part of a huge black iron range

that fed on wormy poplar wood, or coal

in good times.

A huge plank table, wooden benches seating

threshing crews for one week of the year,

was shiny-worn at one end where

the family took their meals.

The living room held two straight chairs,

a lumpy davenport, a chime clock from Scotland

that didn't work, a battery radio,

and a pile of cheap-paper religious periodicals

from a sect professing simple living;

a convenient philosophy

for a stump farmer.

No other written work was anywhere, nor allowed,

even by the blank-eyed hired men

who came to stay for two bucks a day

and left in two weeks, thinner.



On his tree-lined island

Kenny lived, and recently, I hear he died,

most likely doing more good for his land

beneath it

than he ever did above it.

I hope God has some quiet corner;

a dour spot

for Kenny.


Copyright © 2003 by Bruce McKellar