Highways and Byways: The Drowning (Part 1)

Beginning of my preamble to a poem

By Maik Strosahl

I was driving up through west central Illinois on a recent day off with my younger son. With a couple hours of driving left to our day, he was lamenting the lack of a decent internet signal for his iPad near Macomb. I was encouraged that his brain had retracted back into his head so he could actually converse.
    “The nice thing about not having signal,” I started, trying to help him have a positive non-connected moment, “is that it forces you to look around your world.”
    He mumbled in agreement, but only to be polite. I started pointing out different things that occupied my driving time: an interesting tree, graffiti on a sign, shapes in the cloud.
    “I once wrote a poem about a drowning in a bean field,” I said.
    Steven sometimes shows interest in writing. I think he likes the idea of performing the things he writes like I do at occasional poetry readings. Yet, most of the time he gets too nervous to actually share and either I or his mother have to read it for him. My statement got his attention.
    “Do you see how the wind is playing with the soybean leaves in that field? If you use your imagination, it almost looks like the waves on the ocean.”
    “I see it!”
    “Well, one time, I was driving in Indiana, and I saw that happen in the soybeans. Then the field ended against a field of tall corn. I started working with the idea of some kids playing in the corn field, but being afraid to run into the beans because they might drown in the waves.”
    I think he forgot about the internet for a moment as he stared out the windows toward all the crops so green.
    “Did you see that dead deer on the side of the road?” I asked. “What if you were one of those kids and you came to the edge of the beans, the wind blowing just like today, churning up the waves across the field, and you saw that deer, just laying in the beans dead. Would it seem like it drowned?”
    “Yeah, but how did the deer get there?”
    “Well, some of them survive when they get hit by the passing cars only to die later of their injuries in the woods or fields. And sometimes they just die, like humans do. Like Aunt Renate’s husband did last month. We bury our dead, but animals don’t. They lay where they fall—sometimes in the beans. What would you think if you saw a dead deer while you were playing?”
    He really didn’t respond, just kept staring for a few minutes into the passing farms.
    I knew the signal would have returned a while ago, but I considered it a minor victory that he was distracted for a little bit. Too soon, he returned his gaze to the screen and discovered the bars returned.
    The miles disappeared, but maybe the lesson would stay: a moment of discovery, a moment of imagination, another moment of human connection in the waves blowing, in the splash of the beans, stumbling across a tragedy of the mind and living to tell about it....

Copyright © 2022 by Maik Strosahl Michael E. Strosahl has focused on poetry for over twenty years, during which time he served a term as President of the Poetry Society of Indiana. He relocated to Jefferson City, Missouri, in 2018 and currently co-hosts a writers group there.