Where The Meadowlark Sings
Encircle Publications
Farmington, MA
© Copyright 2015,
Ellaraine Lockie
ISBN-13:
978-1-893035-23-2
Softbound,
$12.95, 26 pages
Review by Zvi A.
Sesling
Last I reviewed
Ms. Lockie she was sitting mostly in a Starbucks observing people and writing
about them. Many of those poems had a
subtle humor and were quite enjoyable. This time we find her in home backyard
of Montana Big Sky country. These poems are
more serious, more enjoyable and just as worthy of being read.
These poems can
be hard, gritty, excruciatingly honest and that is what makes them so
compelling. For those of us who live in
the east, or have never been to Montana where Custer made his last stand and Glacier National Park is a top tourist
attraction, there is much to learn and Ms. Lockie provides a somewhat
different, if not personal, education.
In “Godot Goes to
Montana” readers learn the basics of farm life:
My farmer father
waited to
if crops would
hail out or dry up
If coyotes would
tunnel the chicken coops
If the price of
grain could keep
me out of used
clothes
If the bank would
waive foreclosure
for another year
After hay bailing
and breech delivering
from sunrise to
body’s fall
He slept in front
of the evening news
Too worn out to
watch the world squirm
Too weary to hear
warning from ghost brothers
who were slain by
bee, bacon and stress
Too spent to move
into the next day
when couldn’t
afford to forget
how Brew Wilcox
lost his left arm to an auger
How the mayor’s
son suffocated in a silo
Too responsible
to remember the bleak option
my grandfather
chose for the rope
hanging over the
barn rafters
never too lonely
every farmer
had a neighbor to
bullshit with
To share an early
A.M. pot of Folger’s
To eat fresh
sourdough doughnuts
To chew the fat
of their existence
Whether Lockie is
telling you “How To Know A Prairie Poem”
or about “Witches of the West” or what it is like “On the road After a
Record Rain” you will gain insight not only into her psyche, but learn about
the west without didactic preaching. For example take the following poem:
Uninhabited
The one-room
schoolhouse
is weathered by a
hundred years
on the prairie
Emptied of my
mother, aunts, uncles
and the bell in
the tower that tolled
their welcome to
the middle of nowhere
I bring my
daughter here
for an optical
history lesson
Me to summon
ancestor stories
that have been
silenced by the din
of decades in
cities
She forges in
front of me
ever anxious to
embrace anything abandoned
And I’m struck
dumb by the assault
of some instinct
as old and tongue-tied
as those stories
At the doorframe
she hears the hiss
before the rattle
that roots her
to the
cactus-covered earth
As the snake
slithers away
And elementary
education continues
two generations
after it began
in the one-room
schoolhouse
It is easy to see
why Where The Meadowlark Sings was
the winner of the 2014 Encircle Publications Chapbook Contest. It is an accessible and enjoyable read.
_________________________________________
Zvi A. Sesling
Reviewer for Boston Small Press and Poetry Scene
Author, King of the Jungle (Ibbetson St.) and Across Stones of Bad Dreams (Cervena Barva)
Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review
Publisher, Muddy
River Books
Editor, Bagel Bards Anthologies #7 & #8
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