Is It All Right, Stuart?

RAMROD ROWS

How similar they are, tall straight rows
of soldiers and corn that grow so fast
you can hear them in the night, must step
back quickly to keep from being hit by
the tears of joy that descend while
children become men as we watch
them sleeping.

Corn shoots climb like Jack on his beanstalk
to their certain end, tassels waving in the
wind like celebrities' handkerchiefs
under the noses of starstruck admirers,
hiding so much sweetness in their
budding kernels they begin a descent to
tasteless in the instant of picking,
stalks suddenly shorn and stacked in shocks
only if someone notices their loneliness
and binds them for company.

Young men
no more sophisticated than puppies grow
from baby to manhood long before experience
makes them mature, the methods of war instilled
as they stand ramrod, no tassels here,
only flags waving and feet marching
'hut, two, three, four," jab and pull,
aim and shoot, fall and die,
human stalks to turn brown,
dry up, and become fodder.

Gerald T. Perkoff is a physician and Curators Professor Emeritus at the University of Missouri School of Medicine. He and his wife of fifty-eight years have three children and five grandchildren. They live in Columbia, Missouri.