Homage to Robert Pinsky

50s America was on the move, but the family
truck and trailer, now broken down;
Nebraska heat, the sage aroma, wind and sand.

Back then the High Plains sprouted water towers.
Each month—for the father—meant a new construction job.
On the ground the children spread their toys.

Third grade and first, unthinking
how this odyssey would end. Decades
later they might have had a social worker.

The mother, in calf-length skirt limp
with heat and dirt, climbs
into the trailer kitchen to fix a midday meal.

The kids’ trucks, rubber soldiers,
plastic horses, some with just three legs.
Brother hands his sister a favorite palomino.

Nebraska wind and sand: a scene
a lot like poverty; the children’s
heads and clothes are full of it.

The sandwiches the mother makes
while father’s head’s beneath the hood
recall other lives lived in the open, vulnerable.

Ed Block is Emeritus Professor of English at Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, where—until his retirement in 2012—he taught courses on Denise Levertov and Czeslaw Milosz and workshops in creative writing. His poems have appeared in Museletter, Cross-Currents, Spiritus, and a variety of other venues. His collection, Anno Domini, appeared in 2016; Seasons of Change in 2017, Shell Dreams in 2021, Moments Strange in 2023, and Banners of Longing in 2024.