Art: Lights by Elissa Shumaker

Selections from The Transformation of Material Things by Mary Buchinger.

It’s always 6 o’clock here
in this part of the world
and the light slants just so
on the long wet tracks

Outside my window
a man in an old-country
wool suit jacket has a bird—
   a regular backyard bird—
grey and red bobbing
slight on his shoulder
as he talks to the neighbor

-o-

On a cold clear October night
my father drove the corn husker
with me in the wagon behind

My job was to make room for the cobs
falling from the rusty auger
(its shaking cone of dust-light)
my work gloves, too large, but warm

I rode the pile down to the corners
the wood-plank wagon rocking me across the ruts
dry stalks crunched in machinery already ancient

How lucky I felt to be out in the night
the clean hard parcels jostling beneath me
finished smell of husked cobs absolute complete

About the author:

Mary Buchinger, author of three collections of poetry, grew up on a farm in Michigan and served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador. She is President of the New England Poetry Club and teaches English and communication studies at MCPHS University in Boston.

My artistic influences include Elizabeth Bishop, TS Eliot, Louise Gluck, Hilary Sallick, among many other fine poets. Among my awards are the Varoujan and the Houghton Prizes, and my manuscript, Aerialist, was short-listed for the May Swenson Poetry Award, the OSU Press/The Journal Wheeler Prize for Poetry, and the Perugia Press Prize.

In the artist’s words:

Elissa Shumaker is a writer and artist who has traveled abroad, and likes to reflect the city in her pieces.