August 2017
Nels Hanson
hanson@fix.net
hanson@fix.net
I grew up on a family small farm in the San Joaquin Valley of California, where after college at UC Santa Cruz and U of Montana I farmed for a while, vineyard, tree fruit and tomatoes. Writing time was scarce for many years and when I could get to a typewriter I wrote fiction, which I finally had some luck with. I’ve written prose and poetry since my teenage years, perhaps to help process the tensions and dynamics I felt within a tightly knit three-generational family whose roots on the land reached back more than 100 years. Loss and gain, often in unequal measure, are the way of farming and perhaps a good introduction to life in general.
Janus
The doctor’s kind assistant nursed
from childhood a rheumatic heart
but fired a tank’s cannon in the first
Gulf War. He fathered two boys,
three girls, adopted two neglected
infants, raised rare chicken breeds,
wore at his belt a cord with many
knots to count his every blessing
though his wife used a wheelchair
if spinabifida bit a nerve. Twice
he saved my wife with expert care
though he believed cardiologists
only made him worse. Avoiding
hospitals, he led his family from
California to Arkansas, the Ozark
Mountains, 18 timbered acres with
a pond, bought cheap, house, barn,
corral and coops outside tornado
zone. In San Luis Obispo before
he left, late afternoon he stopped
at a light, at his side a yellow car
like his own, its driver a perfect
twin. They watched themselves
at the same but different wheel,
stared at identical shocked face
until angry horn, green light. No
longer singular, each shadow of
a shadow, one heart turned left,
other homing on a blue rooster’s
cry at sunset beyond Fort Smith.
The doctor’s kind assistant nursed
from childhood a rheumatic heart
but fired a tank’s cannon in the first
Gulf War. He fathered two boys,
three girls, adopted two neglected
infants, raised rare chicken breeds,
wore at his belt a cord with many
knots to count his every blessing
though his wife used a wheelchair
if spinabifida bit a nerve. Twice
he saved my wife with expert care
though he believed cardiologists
only made him worse. Avoiding
hospitals, he led his family from
California to Arkansas, the Ozark
Mountains, 18 timbered acres with
a pond, bought cheap, house, barn,
corral and coops outside tornado
zone. In San Luis Obispo before
he left, late afternoon he stopped
at a light, at his side a yellow car
like his own, its driver a perfect
twin. They watched themselves
at the same but different wheel,
stared at identical shocked face
until angry horn, green light. No
longer singular, each shadow of
a shadow, one heart turned left,
other homing on a blue rooster’s
cry at sunset beyond Fort Smith.
©2017 Nels Hanson
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