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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. 

 

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