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Besch, Robert

ROBERT BESCH

Soul Song 
In our deepest selves we bind 
Black and white so tightly 
That the hues between— 
The shades of earth and people, 
And all the pigments of 
Our common lives are lost. 
Oh that we might see 
This fullness that is ours, 
That has been ours

Since primal times;

That we might find delight

In greater spectrum s

Hidden by our minds too long;

That we might seek a truth

In every color made

To keep our souls together.

When You Have Grown 
Child, when you have grown

Beyond the magic

Of your seedling years,

Remember . . .

Mornings when you ached

To drink the total beauty of a day

In small, exquisite sips;

The sun in your exploring eyes,

Bright things cut from paper,

And the smell of new crayons;

Fields that save their mysteries

For brave, bare feet;

And wishing trees

Where fleeting dreams are cupped.

Remember these and all the other

Corners of your shaping world,

Against the time

When others might forget.

To The Sundown Bird 
Sing your lyrics softly, I must not 
Be lured into the woods again tonight. 
I was there this morning and forgot 
How easily I lose myself in flight. 
Finding homeward trails took much too long; 
Have a heart and give me just your song. 
Besch, Robert. "When You Have Grown." The Cornfield Review 1 (1976): 4.
Available online at http://cornfieldreview.osu.edu.  Copyright held by the author.


English

When You Have Grown

ROBERT BESCH

Soul Song 
In our deepest selves we bind 
Black and white so tightly 
That the hues between— 
The shades of earth and people, 
And all the pigments of 
Our common lives are lost. 
Oh that we might see 
This fullness that is ours, 
That has been ours

Since primal times;

That we might find delight

In greater spectrum s

Hidden by our minds too long;

That we might seek a truth

In every color made

To keep our souls together.

When You Have Grown 
Child, when you have grown

Beyond the magic

Of your seedling years,

Remember . . .

Mornings when you ached

To drink the total beauty of a day

In small, exquisite sips;

The sun in your exploring eyes,

Bright things cut from paper,

And the smell of new crayons;

Fields that save their mysteries

For brave, bare feet;

And wishing trees

Where fleeting dreams are cupped.

Remember these and all the other

Corners of your shaping world,

Against the time

When others might forget.

To The Sundown Bird 
Sing your lyrics softly, I must not 
Be lured into the woods again tonight. 
I was there this morning and forgot 
How easily I lose myself in flight. 
Finding homeward trails took much too long; 
Have a heart and give me just your song. 
Besch, Robert. "To The Sundown Bird." The Cornfield Review 1 (1976): 4.
Available online at http://cornfieldreview.osu.edu.  Copyright held by the author.


To The Sundown Bird

Predmore, Dorthy

DORTHY PREDMORE 
Ducks on the Pond 
There are ducks on a neighboring farm pond this fall for the first time in well 
over a year. There have been ducks around the pond all this time, but not on it, 
and the reason for this unusual state of affairs is a story which should be 
pondered. 
A city child had received three ducks and a chicken as Easter gifts, and the 
fuzzy fowls had lost their down and their welcome in their urban home at 
about the same time. What could have been more logical than to take them to a 
farm, especially one with a pond? 
At the farm, the ducks headed for the water, but the chicken, a rooster, 
spread his immature wings and dive-bombed at the ducks, chasing them back 
until they finally accepted the fact that they were chickens, and should not 
swim. So they paraded single file around the shale banks of the mixing bowl 
pond, herded by the ubiquitous rooster. 
The farm children, three boys and a girl, thought the whole thing was very 
funny until a warm day in June when they decided to go swimming. The 
rooster tried his best to stop them, lowering his head, fluffing his growing 
wings, and charging them with all his broiler-weight strength. 
One by one the children broke loose and got to the pond, but the frustrated 
rooster would not give up. He enlarged his tyrannical domain to include any 
human being in sight, whether near the pond or not, until he became a 
nuisance to adults, and a terror to small children. 
Finally, the ducks took over. It is one thing to give up your own freedom 
voluntarily, and quite another to stand by while freedom is taken forcibly from 
others. They rode herd on the rooster, keeping between him and his intended 
quarry, often biting at his neck until it bled, if he persisted. 
A stalemate seemed to have been reached. The rooster saw to it that the 
ducks did not swim, and the ducks made certain that the rooster did not chase 
people. Such is often the fate of those who aspire to be leaders. 
Surely those ducks must have wanted to swim! On a clear day in April or 
September when the white ringed mallards made flying wedges in the sky, the 
shale-bound ducks must have wanted to invite their wild cousins down to 
swim, or perhaps to fraternize. 
25 
• • • 
On a still morning when the white pole barn and the color rampant hillside 
woods were inverted in the mirror smooth water, the ducks must have felt an 
urge to ripple the water, to dive for minnows or duckweed, to preen their 
dusty coats, or to sail nonchalantly out of reach of the rooster, But they 
resisted the impulses, and at what outrageous cost! How terrible to suppress 
your God-given talents. How awful to be a duck who cannot swim. 
And the rooster. The poor rooster. Surely he must have wanted to chantic­
leer the dawn, to strut on the lush front lawn instead of having to patrol a 
grassless circle. What a burden it must have been to try to keep three wives in 
line (or was it a wife, a mother, and a mother-in-law?), especially three who 
seemed to have no idea at all about how chicken womenfolk are supposed to 
behave. 
If his behavior had been motivated by genuine concern for the safety of the 
ducks, or even from the economic necessity of keeping the pond full of clean 
clear water, it would have been admirable. But the truth was that the rooster, 
like all tyrants, was driven by fear. Because he was afraid of water, he decided 
that water was bad for everyone. The more the fear possessed him, the more 
determined he was to control everything around him. 
After more than a year of the deadlock, the farmer, when sending his caged 
layers to market, decided to send the rooster along. 
That evening the ducks went swimming. They waddled casually down to 
the pond and went swimming as naturally as though they had been doing it all 
their lives .They seemed no more to remember or regret their recent restriction 
than a mountain stream recalls its frozen origin. 
Only the children remembered. And wondered. 
26

Predmore, Dorthy. "Ducks on the Pond." The Cornfield Review 1 (1976): 25 - 26.
Available online at http://cornfieldreview.osu.edu.  Copyright held by the author.


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