Archie Birdsall
(Dec. 21, 1891 - Nov. 1, 1963)
Is it only coincidence I’ve imagined my death
might have come in the same manner
before I knew how he died, before I knew
of his existence at all, grandfather I’ve belatedly
found a half century after he breathed his last?
Why the father who adopted me never explained
that tractors pulling can rise back right on over
the rear wheels when what they’re pulling
gets hung up, I’ll never know. But his
failure to say might have left me crushed
and broken at 16, the same autumn grandfather
died. Surely grandfather would have
warned me had I been there, high on the seat
of the tractor that Saturday in 1963, home
from school, the field wet and muddy
after rain. He must have known when his
mud-slicked boot slipped from the clutch as he was
pulling a reluctant elm stump that the worst
was next. Grandmother Vera witnessed
it from the kitchen window, they say.
Grandfather lay pinned, conscious and
able to direct the neighboring men who had
rushed to help get the tractor off. He
survived nearly two weeks in the hospital
before he died. I did not imagine that, though. I
thought my death crushed by a tractor would have been
different. I thought my death would have been quick.
Matthew J. Spireng’s 2019 Sinclair Poetry Prize-winning book Good Work was published in 2020 by Evening Street Press. An 11-time Pushcart Prize nominee, he is the author of two other full-length poetry books, What Focus Is and Out of Body, winner of the 2004 Bluestem Poetry Award, and five chapbooks. He was the winner of The MacGuffin’s 23rd Annual Poet Hunt Contest in 2018 and the 2015 Common Ground Review poetry contest. Website: matthewjspireng.com.
