"Stranger In Paradise" oozed like lovers' syrup from the radio, as I parked in thick Oak shade, and emerged, shirtless, mahogany brown, rock-hard, washboard stomach, ready to work. My forehead sprouted sweat.

"Hey, Tuffy."

"Hey, Mr. Trout. Looks like you've got trouble?"

"Yeah. Been shearing pins."

"I'll hold that wrench," I said.

"Too loose, we stop every ten minutes, too tight and the baler blows up."

We adjusted the tension, then adjusted our thirst beneath a clanking, rust-cankered windmill that pumped the world's best water.

"You're good help, Tuffy."

"Aim to be."

"You pitch in, without bein' asked, like you grabbed that wrench back there. Ain't many do that."

"They never worked for my father."

My friends drove in ahead of a dust cloud. They were brown, hard and late.

"Hey, boys," Mr. Trout said.

"Where you been all day?" I needled.

"Hey, Mr. Trout. Hey, Tuff."

Hey was our greeting. Hay was our work. We convoyed our gear to the field and baled clover. It's hard, hot, brainless labor, repetitious. The hay wagon sways, bounces, hooked to the kachunck, kachunk, kachunk of the New Holland Super 77 that swallows the dusty windrows and expels heavy bales.

I grew sweat-slick, chaff wooled up in my forearm hair. My body was chained to the baler, but my brain was free to dance with the creative angels of my heart.

I wrote secret poems, told no one, lest my manhood be stained.

My body was rock but soft clouds drifted in my soul. Poems come from clouds not rocks. My friends respect my muscle. They would crucify the poet, if they knew. Let he who is without sin cast the first poem. I wrote my poems on paper, gave birth to them, converted them from thought to a tangible that I could hold, read, savor, love.

Then I destroyed them, shredded, burned, flushed. No one could know that I was a poet. Big boys don't cry, they don't write poems. Ever see a tough poet?

I loved being hard, but I loved words more, their sounds, meanings, mystery, origins, cognates: Dios, diety. Mort, murder. Luc, light. Noc, night. Negra, Negro. Fin, finish.

I was like a child and words were my ice cream, no, my creme de la creme. Frio, freeze. My friends would devour ice cream. They would never swallow my poetry. Tough boys don't cry, don't write poems either.

The sun set on the last load of hay and sculptured the eternal hills in peaceful light. I would be alone for five minutes. I wrestled a soggy pad and pencil stub from sweat-wet jeans and scribbled my thoughts:

IOWA

A friendly, rolling prairie,

Curls up against the evening sun,

A faithful, brown dog

Warms at a fading hearth

Curried roughly for the sowing

In autumn clipped of everything

It sleeps beneath the winter snowing

And dreams contentedly of spring

I read it again, savored the words, wadded it up for my pocket. I would burn it later.

We stripped naked and cooled off in Mr. Trout's pond. Heat-slack scrotums shrunk tight in the liquid coolness. Black torsos contrasted our milk-white legs that the sun never touched, the public never saw. We hated that our legs were pearly white. We never swam in public places, never wore shorts, never! We cursed those girlie summer legs. Snow white legs, our common secret. Milky legs, poetry. Everyone hides something.

As usual Mother woke me, but this time into a nightmare. She held the soggy scrap of paper, my poem.

"I washed your jeans, found this. Did you write it?"

I groaned, confessed.

"It's beautiful, Marty." She brushed a tear.

I swore my mother to secrecy on her eyeballs, then sat down to my hard eggs. Finally someone knew.

I rarely saw her so cheery as she was that day, and she insisted on a kiss before I went away. What followed was a moment, like a fine poem, you take to your grave.

She came to me; her smile nourished by roots that stretched to her heart, her eyes still strangely moist, her arms open. She wanted a kiss.

"Big boys don't kiss their mothers," I said.

"Poets do."

Marty RicKard Bio



Marty RicKard attended William Penn College, Iowa State University and University of Southern Mississippi, from which he holds a BS degree in journalism and photojournalism. He also has a Masters Degree in photography, in addition to the Craftsman, CPP, and A-ASP degrees. Marty spent two years as a technical writer for White Motor Company, and has worked for the Charles City Press, Mason City Globe-Gazette, and Davenport Times-Democrat. He was co-owner of the weekly New Sharon Star, where he was twice named Iowa Master Columnist for his article, which was syndicated in twenty Iowa newspapers. For more than a decade Marty's regular column appeared in the Professional Photographer magazine. He has been published in many other magazines and newspapers, including Writer's Digest, Writer Advice, Golf Digest, Resource Magazine, Picture, Range Finder, and Darkroom. In addition to his writing credits, Marty has won numerous photography awards, has lectured in 48 states, and has traveled internationally as lecturer, and judge. He was one of thirty from the U.S. to participate in the first cultural exchange with China in 1986. He currently is a regular columnist for Lens Magazine, and a full-time writer of fiction and poetry. He is the author of two poetry books and one volume of short stories. He is an entertaining speaker.