Almost Home
Steve West
Christmas Picking
“Christmas Picking” is when people go back into the fields
to harvest the few bolls missed during the first picking.
The pickers hope to make a little extra money for the holidays.
Money was extra tight that year,
And Daddy said, “Let’s go do a Christmas picking,
Maybe make a few dollars.”
We all dragged sacks through the sad,
Depleted fields, grabbing the few remaining cotton
Bolls that had escaped the reaping.
It had rained, and we had to wade in Delta mud.
I was really too little, and I’d been sick,
But Daddy let me go, knowing I wanted to help
Make some Christmas out of adversity.
We made $12 and Daddy bought a ham,
Sweet potatoes, and a bag of sugar so Mama
Could candy yams and bake a cake.
She would open beans and beets she’d canned
Last summer and we’d feast,
With cornbread luscious with her own butter.
Daddy gave me a dollar, and I bought Mama
A handkerchief with little hearts, Daddy a big plug
Of Black Maria, and big brother a picture of George Kell,
Our baseball hero from Swifton.
I bought myself a baseball, rubber coated
So it would last longer being thrown
Against the faded planks of the barn,
A strike zone etched in chalk
Where I’d strike out Johnny Mize
A dozen times a day.
Money was tight that year,
But Christmas was OK, a cedar
Twinkling in the corner and Uncle Charley
Gnawing the last of the ham from the bone,
Allowing as how he hated ham,
But that this one did have
A damn good taste.
isbn 1-59661-118-9
44 pages/$9
When you open your copy of Almost Home, you are suddenly and deliciously one of the family, privileged to gnaw the ham bone with Uncle Charley, walk where the corn patch prays for a drink, and see the world of grit and honey through the amazing eyes of Steve West. These poems take you to the marrow of country living, with a sweet twist of poetry offering life savored close to the rind. If you give this book to a friend or relative, the stories from your lives will begin to flow like a river of words in your own essential way of saying.
--Kim Stafford, author of The Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and
Other Pleasures from the Writer’s Craft (University of Georgia Press).
Steve West’s elegiac book asks where does time abide, but in reverie, story and the written word’s power to bury and unbury the dead. West’s poems are rich with landscape, characters and imagery, rich with language illusive and layered as fish shadows that slide/ Past the edges of shade into sunshine, / Disappear into the depths. Whether you are familiar with rural Arkansas or not, you'll be almost home when you read these poems.
--Bill Brown, author of Late Winter (Iris Press).