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For Bishop Leon Clark* 

* Killed when a grain-filled silo burst. 

I 

The harvest poured til you could bear 
            No more, till you 
Could neither know nor care. 

Immersed: the word rings clean and true, 
            Immersed you in 
God’s plenty that cost us you. 

The best harvest you had tasted 
            But a great belly 
Burst and a good man wasted. 

Great concrete gates swung wide, no doubt
            But not to let 
You in: the harvest out. 

You took full measure of His blessings 
            And left 
To us the sad assessings. 

***

Every way I think or say 
            It comes out 
Bitter irony: 

Under the harvest yourself desired. 

Why? 

The question teases on the edge of sense 
            Suspends darkly 
Over dark parentheses 

And we can only wonder. . . 

II 

When our father took us out to see what you had done
With Deep Creek, out over the ridge past Bear Hollow
To look down on rich green pasture where only sagebrush
Interrupted by an occasional chokecherry or serviceberry
Had grown, the hillside green sloping away toward the creek,
Cattle near the bottoms belly deep in green by a clump of trees
Beside the stream—a poet’s pastoral dream, including the backdrop:
First the pasture land sloping up and away, then deeper scrub-oak green 
Then pines covering all the steepening slopes, 
Climbing fast now, to the ragged stretches of the Wasatch range
Defining our valley, both bounds and character, 
All the way up Monday Town (where no town was) 
Up past First Hollow, where I’d tipped my first header box over
And been buried in harmless headings, 
Past rust-brown silhouettes of old headers and combines,
Outline history of our dry-farm struggles, 
Past alfalfa on both sides of Monday Town gulch 
(He had to stop and wade with us out through it 
And out through wheat further on, both wondrously green
Against my memories of six-horse teams trudging in dust
To pull two-bottom plows along these stretching slopes
Through almost any of my growing-up summers) 
Up and over Bear Hollow ridge and down through the hollow,
Fallow that year, on up and over to all that green.

Outside the car, as our children scattered through the green,
He stood and looked, stretched out his arms, 
Moved them in gentle arc, 
Then turned and looked at us, softly sharp, for long moments
To see if we were glowing too. 

An hour we stood and talked, 
Re-lived long summers of clearing and burning brush
And burning ourselves 
And watching helplessly burning wheat 
Under the unjust sun 
And spreading bait along the squirrel-ravaged periphery
And finding the sickly pale and acrid green of stink weed patches;
Re-lived the early autumns of Uncle Carlos skinning header teams
Along side hills no plow should even have touched,
We marveling at the skill and at the stream of expletives
When chain came off or canvas carriers clogged; 
Remembered old Brother Johansen and his threshing machines
The slip of headings under our feet 
The trick father taught us of levering with knee 
Sewed sacks of grain onto wagon or truck 
The marvel of Mother’s cooking for thirty threshing hands
The first combine, that made such meals obsolete 
The first crawler cat, to pull the combine and to pull
The first disc plow, that left twelve feet of new-turned soil
Our slow discoveries about steep-slope pastures 
And how alfalfa holds moisture on gentler slopes 
And builds soil toward the best hay in the valley

Remembered all this—and saw the deepening glow
In his eyes when he saw the answering glow 
In ours. 

He turned, stretched his arms again in that slow 
Arc of benediction, full circle now 
To enclose us all, 
Saw all those years 
Fulfilled beneath his arms, 
Fulfilled in all of us, 
Fulfilled at last and most in you. 

III

. . . And satisfy ourselves in wonder 
At God’s plenty that gave us you 
And that you gave us 
God’s plenty in your family 
God’s plenty in the memories 
God’s plenty under the arc 
Of Father’s arms.