Aerial Photos of the Plains : For Charles Baxter
You more or less have to be a real fan of green
to keep on staring at one rectangle after another
of what’s essentially just grass with only an
occasional peasant hut to interrupt the dullness
until you learn to find beneath the magnifying
lens
the upturned faces of the families living there
who’ve come outside to try to find the source
of that
thin buzz above their heads and only then the
details
emerge--the crude bandage sticking to the
woman’s
cheek--the bruises on the kids--the man who
even from
this height looks mean as he attempts to
hide one
ape-like arm behind his back so we won’t see
the stain
along his sleeve and then in other shots
the woman’s pushing back her hair or
straightening the children’s
shirts so they can look their best for us--
as when
we used to stop along a railroad track to wave
and watch
the engineer wave back because what we wanted
most was
to be noticed by some god and then be sure he’d
go away
1991 by James Krusoe. Reprinted by permission of the author.
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