Grandfather Poem, Prairie Poem

A poem of mine is now live at Eunoia Review. Thanks to the editor of Eunoia Review, Ian Chung, for accepting it and publishing it. The poem is called "Transference (Middle West)" and it's about my maternal grandfather and the place in the world where we grew up, the American Midwest--which was once the American prairie.

My granddaddy re-visiting the schoolhouse he went to as a child in Iowa

Chicago skyscrapers, looking south from John Hancock Tower

My grandfather's name was William Collins but everyone called him Bernie after his middle name, Bernard. Bernard was also the name of the town (if you can even call it that) where he was born in Iowa in 1900. Where he was born and raised is west of the Mississippi River. He had 3 siblings who survived. He grew up on a farm but his own father lost his farm shortly before the Great Depression. My grandfather found work east of the Mississippi, in Illinois in Rockford, not long before marrying my grandmother, who came from Otter Creek in Iowa, in 1926. After marrying, my grandmother moved to Rockford with him but they didn't stay in Rockford long. My grandfather's boss was a Swedish man who would knock the Irish in back-handed compliments to my grandfather ("Are you sure you're Irish? I never knew any Irishman who worked hard like you.") and my grandfather couldn't tolerate that. So they moved to the south side of Chicago, near Visitation Parish, where it was all Irish, and my grandfather worked in a plastics factory. The stockyards were still around then. My mother says she can still remember the smell.

Railroad work in Iowa. My grandfather is among the 4 down on the tracks, second from right.

Hay making in Iowa

My grandma (second from left) with her parents and some of her siblings in Iowa. Cornfields in background.

In the city now. Chicago, Van Buren Street, southwest side. My grandparents (center) with two religious friends and my aunt Lois, about 1928.

Eventually my grandfather moved his family to the northwest side of the city (where I was born), which was mostly Polish at the time and closer to the city limits. Chicago was already mighty and lively in those days (the 30s and 40s) but it didn't yet have the skyscrapers and the great skyline along Lake Michigan that it's known for today. The skyscrapers would start to come in the 60s and 70s, in my lifetime. My grandparents had moved back to Iowa, to Dubuque, by the time I was born in 1972. We visited them at least twice a year. My grandfather kept a large garden in his backyard where he grew corn, tomatoes, and beans. He had raspberry bushes and a tiny vineyard--just a few grape vines, really--from which he made his own wine. Beer too. Their backyard also had a horse chestnut tree that attracted bats and lightning bugs in the evening. We all loved to stay out in the backyard until dusk when the bats came out.

Granddaddy in Chicago with his 3 daughters. My mother is on the left. My aunts Lois and Betty on the right. They were working class but the fashion and hairstyles were still very different from those of their country cousins back in Iowa.

Chicago skyline in 2013, view from boat on Lake Michigan

Granddaddy with my youngest brother, Eric, and sisters Arla and Bonnie, around 1970. In Iowa alongside a country road, with long prairie grasses still growing on the hillside.

My grandfather died in 1980 when I was 7 from prostate cancer. I admit that I have few real memories of him. I mainly remember him when he was dying, in the hospital and such. I was in the 3rd grade and my teacher made us kids write in journals every day for a half hour or so. When my grandfather was dying, I wrote in my journal about it and said I felt sorry for him. I didn't know what cancer was at that age so I wrote "I think he has the flu." I have some memories of his wake and funeral, the first I ever went to. At first I thought I'd write down some of those memories here but I've decided to keep them to myself, except for the memory of seeing one of my parents (my mother) cry for the first time in my life, during the funeral service, and how it worried me.

We had moved out of Chicago to the suburbs by the time he died. Years later, his wife, my grandmother, would come to live with us after a stroke. Chicago and its suburbs stretched forever by the 80s and stretch even farther today. We have no bats in our area of Chicagoland--but we have cardinal birds (the Illinois state bird) and lightning bugs. We have a horse chestnut in our backyard. 

Chicagoland, looking northwest from the Sears Tower

Prairie garden in Lincoln Park in Chicago

There were still some farms and open fields when we moved out here from the city, but they are long gone today. You have to drive longer now to reach the farms. The prairie is mostly gone except for some preserved sections here and there. The people who lived on the prairies before Europeans came are mostly gone too--either assimilated, killed by whites, or pushed north and west onto reservations. In Chicago, there are parks that have tried to revive some of the prairie grasses and flowers that once grew all over the Midwest. In Lincoln Park, for example, you can stand and cast a shadow over prairie flowers while the Hancock Tower stands and casts a shadow over the north side of the city. 

The John Hancock Tower downtown with Lincoln Park prairie in foreground

I wrote this poem months ago when I was looking forward to the coming of spring and summer after a very long and even-colder-than-usual winter. This year it seemed to be taking forever for winter to hand the reins over to spring. I suppose I wrote about my grandfather in this way because I don't have too many of my own memories to call upon. I am the youngest of all his grandchildren so there are only a few pictures I can find of me with him. I knew him the shortest amount of time. So I wrote a poem that draws out time in images of what's changed and hasn't changed in the part of the country where my grandfather and I come from. Here's the poem (the link is in the words).

Me sitting on my granddaddy's lap and my grandma, at their 50th wedding anniversary, 1976