The Day the Public Works Department Came for Reinhardt Field
The Day the Public Works Department
Came for Reinhardt Field
Matthew Kirby
A new day breaks; a field, two trucks of stone,
a front end loader. Men in neon green
look out along a hidden tension line,
envisioning the footprint of a depot:
some thirteen thousand square for trucks to park
hemmed in by walls of corrugated steel.
The ginkgo, which perhaps they’ll spare, still sways.
Its upper branches glide above the heads
of men, consorting with the sky and wind
in ways eluding two-legged wanderers.
Our true thing is the field, where boys face off
as if at Agincourt, where girls drop bikes
and make the bases of the three great trees
as whispery as bedrooms; field of war
and agonies, where I once yelled at two
delinquents smashing glass, earned old dude from
another three, who, hounding after girls,
rebounded to the nearest passerby.
The field’s true nature hid itself from me,
until the prime antagonist, possessed
of sword by legal writ or default, clad
in neon green and armed with caution tape,
tromped in and, chomping bagels, divvied up
the spoils one morning past my privet hedge.
This isn’t Agincourt, you guys. Relax.
A fallow field is all it is, a place
where middle schoolers loping home kick cans,
throw punches, practice meting justice out.
Now it’s a prize for pothole fillers in
synthetic tees, who punctuate the breeze
with backup beeps and orders spat in self-
important tones. They’re just the bearers of
our lack of negative capacity.
How could they love this untamed rectangle,
appreciate its preexisting order?
An empty field cries out for gravitas.
It calls for leisure like the boy who kicks
a soccer ball alone, walks toward it, kicks,
and walks again, scanning a hidden line.
Matthew Kirby
Poet & Editor
Matthew is a poet, essayist, and the managing editor of Our Sunday Visitor. His work has appeared in various periodicals, including Literary Matters, The Local Fold, and Dappled Things. He lives in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley with his wife and children.
Photography by Brecht Denil