Two After Grant Wood, by Vince Gotera

Spring in Town, by Grant Wood (USA) 1941

 
​Harbinger
 
In 1941, Grant Wood could not 
have missed the impending fires of world war
on the way. You can see it in the green
sky here: a tornado coming. A plot
of ground dark as new graves. Is this farmer
planting or digging? Seeding or mourning?
 
Townspeople going about everyday
life —clotheslines and lawnmowers. Pearl Harbor
just months away. In Europe, shirtless men
like this one dying in showers. Someday
                           soon, he’ll wear Army green.

Spring in the Country, by Grant Wood (USA) 1941

​Childhood Memory
 
Fluffy white clouds are ranged in rank and file,
like the puffy plants the boy — Grant himself --
is sowing, life regimented by spring
 
arriving as the earth itself turns. While
the mother digs holes in the soil, herself
a sturdy twin to the white tree standing
 
behind, the father is steering a team
of horses, hard going to this high shelf.
Grant’s boyish world: stolid mom, commanding
dad, lush dark Iowa soil, headstrong dreams
                                        of spring, always young.

​Vince Gotera

​Vince Gotera is Poet Laureate of Iowa. He taught at the University of Northern Iowa for almost 30 years. Edited the North American Review (2000-2016) and Star*Line, the print journal of the international Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association (2017-2020). Poetry collections include Dragonfly, Ghost Wars, Fighting Kite, The Coolest Month. and Dragons & Rayguns. Recent poems in Dreams & Nightmares,  The MacGuffin, Rattle, and Yellow Medicine Review. He blogs at The Man with the Blue Guitar.