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The diner is closed today
for weather, a paper sign

on the door, the parking lot
unplowed, the trains

derailed at Mason City
because of the ice. That noise

could have been deer
folding into the fields

while the Monticello
Boys Choir sang

in the auditorium
about messenger angels. But what

is ceremony without coffee,
pancakes wet with butter,

frozen blueberries, spatulas
greased with this morning's

eggs, while someone crouches
outside in corn, hiding prayer

beneath her blue sweatshirt,
the whispers of farm

against farm, conspiring
to unzip Illinois?

The same man who
discovered margarine

named his daughter
after a white flower.

In the south garden,
bearing his name, the cows

lose their legs in deep snow,
eating down to the exhausted grass

and the frozen lowing things
that uphold it. In this,

we find our can openers
and turn the heat so high,

the air filling with such expectation
it could be the new year.

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Copyright © 2014 Matthew Gavin Frank All rights reserved
from The Morrow Plots
Black Lawrence Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission