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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
WITCHING ON HARDSCRABBLE, by WALTER ROBERT MCDONALD Poet's Biography First Line: Farming on dry land, a man keeps his witch-stick Last Line: Brought in elsewhere in texas. With my own eyes. Alternate Author Name(s): Mcdonald, Walt Variant Title(s): Witching Subject(s): Drought; Farm Life; Prairies - Texas; Water; Agriculture; Farmers; Plains - Texas | |||
Farming on dry land, a man keeps his witch-stick handy. It might be dark little pepper clouds at night, maybe a coyote lame in the hip and desperate, cramming his head through the chicken wire and choked to death. Something will give a sign, and faith aside, you go witching. Women I know like willows, most men take oak or sycamore. If Zacchaeus could see the Lord from a sycamore, my Uncle Murphy used to say, the same branch ought to point me to the water of life. But it's maple for me, the peeled crotch bone-white and hollow in the heartwood, tiny tubes that sough in the wind like ghosts I hear offering advice. Go, they moan so low I sometimes think I'm dreaming, Go. And I go that way for a while, the maple dragging the other way. I've seen my daddy bring them in five times a summer. The record is six, one short of perfect. I've wondered if it isn't this land I keep scratching to make a living, hardpan, ten inches of rain a year, flat as the day Columbus was born. I've seen wells brought in elsewhere in Texas. With my own eyes. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SETTLING THE PLAINS (1) by WALTER ROBERT MCDONALD STARTING A PASTURE by WALTER ROBERT MCDONALD SKETCHES OF THE TEXAS PRAIRIE: 'APRIL RAINS' by GEORGE BOND THE LAST SALOON IN LUBBOCK by WALTER ROBERT MCDONALD TO LUCASTA ON GOING TO THE WARS FOR THE FOURTH TIME by ROBERT RANKE GRAVES SONNET: WRITTEN ON THE DAY THAT MR. LEIGH HUNT LEFT PRISON by JOHN KEATS SONNET: 24. THE STREET by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL |
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