Poem: 'An Ocean for Iowa'

Poet Todd Boss
St. Paul poet Todd Boss.
Photo courtesy Todd Boss

Minnesota poet Todd Boss has spent some time in Iowa recently. In the spirit of the holidays, he'd like to give the state a gift. Something big to distract it from politics for a while. How about...an ocean?

AN OCEAN FOR IOWA

I don't know why. Oh, why
not, though? Don't Iowans
deserve an ocean as much as
Rhode Islanders or New
Zealanders do? We'll make it
a little one if we have to, like
the Indian. The Missouri
will fill it, and we won't
displace anyone--no farms
will be harmed in the
pouring of this ocean--
we'll simply make a little
room in Pottawattami or
Union County between
formerly neighboring towns
like Anita and Atlantic,
Manning and Manilla, or
Dunlap and Defiance.
I'm thinking mostly of
southwestern Iowa, because
then Kansans and Nebraskans
can come for an afternoon
and still get home in time
for church supper or choir.
Some farmers will become
lobstermen, and who could
blame them? Others, going down
to its shores between chores
will bring home again strings
of deliciously white-fleshed
ocean-fresh poems. And
the women, let's not forget
the women. They're going
to adore the ocean. It will
inspire them to do more
lovemaking, and if there's
anything Iowa needs, God
knows it's more lovemaking.
I want Iowan women, when
they're sick of looking at corn
on every horizon, to be able to
climb into the seats of their
husbands' stick-shift
Silverados and drive all 45
dirt miles of State Hwy 30
through Glidden, Ralston,
Scranton, Jefferson,
Grand Junction, Ogden,
and Jordan, come at last
to a dust-cloud stop there
where the cornfields end
on the bluffs overlooking
the Cape of Des Moines
or Omaha Bay, rest their
misted soft trusting
Delft eyes awhile on the
lapped whitecapped quilt-
work of the Iowan Ocean,
then go home and love their
husbands with a rocking motion.
Oh, sure, there'll be some
whose stubborn German
pride will rear at the mere
suggestion: We don't need
no stinking ocean, we're
Iowans, not Californians.
California's got an ocean,
what good's it done them?
And they'll have a point:
The ocean's largely wasted
on Californians. Also New
Yorkers and Floridians. No,
an ocean's a prize uniquely
commensurate with being
Iowan: for plying the sea
of tallgrass in glass-cabined
crafts, staring deep into green;
for a lifetime's attention
to the singularly homely
flowering and fruiting of
the lowly soybean; for
shameless ministration to
the nameless and unseen--
We hereby christen this
ocean the Iowan Ocean, 8th
biggest water mass on Earth.
May it bring joy on an order
of magnitude equivalent to
the sea of corn sweetener
her refineries pour into
the food and drink factories
of the world. May it scrub
the stench from every hog
barn; dilute the pollutants,
soften every stubbornness;
un-govern every caucus.
May a new spirit
move upon the face of the
waters and wash across the
wheat fields, filling with a
newfound joy every sower,
crop-duster, and reaper.
And may the sky, bluer
than the blue from any
prism, fill them with a truly
nondenominational new
evangelism, truer than any
truism, and worlds deeper.

---

Todd Boss is a St. Paul poet. His second collection of poems, "Pitch," will be released in February 2012.

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