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      January 16, 2025One Brother Said to the Other, ‘Let’s Go into the Fields’Philip Levine

      Beyond the old barn
      a small stream ran all those winter days,
      and beyond the stream almost nothing grew
      except weeds, poke grass, burdock, scatterings
      of hemp plants left from years back. If you
      stood still and let the pale sunlight descend
      around you and said nothing, you’d catch
      the echo of human voices, but better not
      to hear what was said. Better to walk
      beyond the sagging fences and keep going
      until there was no where to go, for the birds
      circling above were not there for you.
      In the low trees at the edge of the woods
      you might find abandoned nests, their eggs
      slashed open. Reach in and touch the twigs
      bundled into a gray basket of hopes.
      Now let your hand wander the crusted leaves
      while the west wind, rising at last, brings
      what we are here for: the same blood smell.

      from Issue #10 - Winter 1998

      Philip Levine

      “I’d like to be remembered as a good teacher and a good father and a good poet and a good husband and a good brother. There are a lot of things I’d like to be remembered for, come to think of it. But I suppose chief among them would be as a good poet, or somebody who advanced American poetry or somebody who took it into areas where it hadn’t been.”

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