Twyla M. Hansen

We had the good fortune to meet Twyla M. Hansen, the Nebraska State Poet Laureate.  While Hansen is a renown poet, and has published over a dozen books and anthologies, she also has a background in agriculture and horticulture.  Not only was she raised by a farming family, she also received a master's degree in agroecology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and worked as the grounds manager and arboretum curator at Nebraska Wesleyan University.  She currently lives and works in Lincoln, where her wooded acre is maintained as an urban wildlife habitat and was recognized in 1994 by the Mayor’s Landscape Conservation Award.  Her poetry struck us as hitting a harmony between the beauty of ecology and the science of agriculture, so we are thrilled that she is willing to let us post some of her poems on our website.  This is third of three installments of poetry from Hansen.

This third poem features apples, which reminded us of our work combating fire blight, and apple-themed recipes perfect for fall.

GREEN APPLES

Photo Credit: Furya

Because I want to be my older brother

I do what he tells me,

with saltshaker, in hand-me-downs,

climb behind him up a ladder of limbs

in the run-down orchard, perch at attention

on the opposite side of the trunk, await

orders:  apples, tart, inside and out

the shade of early summer.

The newly-feathered pullets, meanwhile,

beaks clipped, eyes blank, clucking

at random for cracked corn and oyster shells

in the dirt below, while

Mother gathers grocery money in the chicken house,

where the dust of feathers and straw and droppings

hangs visible in the air, a pungent haze,

where a few hens huddle over hope in cubicles.

When he says go, we lick and salt,

that first mouthful a bolt through the taste buds,

my brother and I cohorts in a conspiracy of silence.

With a pocket knife he stabs out worm holes,

and because I want to be my older brother

I bite and spit, hoping this will do the trick,

unlock the door to the secret clubhouse, whether in

the attic or on boards nailed into a branch,

notion to be blunted sooner rather than later,

this brother betraying me when my stomach rebels,

knuckles punching my arm silly, Mother saying

if I told you once I told you a thousand times,

there in a tangle of leaves, in a land of feast and famine,

among pears and feeder calves, pines and manure,

sweet clover and silage, under the indifferent farmyard sun

where for a brief lifetime my brother and I were one.

© Twyla M. Hansen, Nebraska State Poet

from Dirt Songs: A Plains Duet (with Linda M. Hasselstrom (2011 The Backwaters Press)

2012 Winner, Nebraska Book Award, Nebraska Center for the Book

2012 Finalist, High Plains Books Award, Billings (MT) Parmly Library

2012 Finalist, WILLA Literary Award, Women Writing the West