Poems by Iris Corry

Another Home

Trees were our umbrellas—they sang of rain.
The dry weeds talked. I wanted to leave
The hot beet fields and sociable cows in the pasture.

After supper we visited late with Mother
In the kitchen. Small gray mice listened. Outside,
The rattlesnakes were coming streamward.

One Sunday a neighbor in his boots
Carried my brother’s body home from the water.
My mother wept, her apron to her face.

Mormon Shade

Trees were a trademark—any tree would do
As long as it cast a shadow. From the Big Horn
South, the people—then the trees—near the water.
Quick-growing and soft—boxelders, elms, cottonwoods
And Lombardy poplars like exclamation points!

Now shade for lopsided houses, roots in cesspools,
Peeled carcasses along forgotten ditches.
The trees are old, and the houses, and the children
Who put the cuttings in the soil they watered.