The Elegant Farmer

They brought them back in the lightless box
of a bakery truck from Milwaukee, eight
or ten shuffling brown men, glassy-eyed
and stiff from the labor of staying upright
in the turns. They wore no shackles but moved
like a chain gang down a plank ramp
blinking against the early light. You could
talk to all but a few after an hour’s work.

Some had no English, some were walled off
into themselves, as if listening to music.
First break I’d go into the office
where a shining percolator was kept full
of thin coffee all times, and pour as many cups
as I could carry steaming out into the morning.
We’d sit on straw bales in the parking lot taking
the sun and if anyone had cigarettes he might

offer them around. Then we’d pile into the beds
of several blown pick-ups held together
with bailer twine and go back up into the orchard
to stoop below the trees raking apples, windfall
or knocked loose by the weekend pickers
from the cities. One bin for apples with no
obvious defect, another for the broken
skinned, those to be pressed into cider.

One man had been out a long time and said
he followed a regular route, drifting
with the weather. Often, warming into the work,
the others would begin to talk about how
they’d spend the day’s cash but this man
didn’t talk about drink or drugs or women.
He said he’d been out to California, Las Vegas,
Washington state, had worked the harvest

all over the western states. His hands
were cracked and his eyes red, but he didn’t
seem unhappy or dire in his prospects.
His clothes were shiny at knees and elbows
and yet if he was unclean this uncleanliness
seemed not to touch him, or to partake of his person.
When he pushed his sleeves up in the heat of day,
his dark arms were covered in tawny scars.

There was a single jakes in the Orchard
for the pickers and often the first day man
to have to piss might wander down the hill
rather than turn his back to the crew. When
he did the rest of us, saying nothing, gathered up
as many apples as we could hold and waited
a moment—another—then sailed them
high all at once, to rain down on that little house

and the man in it, so that before he could either
finish or escape he was trapped in the impossible,
unlooked for thunder of apples, throwing wide
the door, red-faced and sputtering, the fly
of his pants gathered in a hand. If we were not
friends before this we were friends, of a sort,
after it, smiling around shyly like the boys we
had all been once. Windfall, whole, or broken.

NORTHEAST – In the first part of October I'll be on tour in the Northeast in the quartet formation, on a run of shows that starts at the Oxbow in Portland, ME (10/2), and heads down to Passim in Cambridge, MA (10/3), back out to the Pioneer Valley for a show at the Iron Horse (10/4) and north again to Jimmy's Jazz and Blues Club in Portsmouth, NH (10/5). Later in the month we'll go back to our favorite barn in Galway, NY, the Cock 'n Bull (10/16), over to The Spire Center in Plymouth, MA (10/17) and out the beautiful Groton Hill Music Center (10/18).

Our friends in the bluegrass outfit Old Hat Stringband open 10/2-5, and 17, while our old friend and bandmate Caitlin Canty joins us in Galway to open the show and sing with the band like old times, supporting her beautiful new album Night Owl Envies the Mourning Dove, out this month. Another old pal, Reed Foehl, opens Groton.

WEST – Later in October I'll start a tour of WA, OR, MT, and CA, starting at the lovely old Tractor Tavern in Seattle (10/22), and moving through The Belfry in Sisters (10/23), The Shedd in Eugene, OR (10/24) Rockford Grange Hall in Hood River, OR (10/25), Mississippi Studios in Portland, OR (10/26), and the New Prospect Theatre in Bellingham, WA (10/28). After that we'll play two nights in Montana, first at Live from the Divide in Bozeman (11/1) and then The Show Room at ZACC in Missoula (11/2).

After that we'll head down to California for shows at The Venice West (11/4) Tales from the Tavern in Santa Ynez, CA (11/5), Little Saint in Healdsburg, CA (11/6), The Arcata Playhouse in Arcata, CA (11/7), Heringer Estates in Clarksburg, CA (11/8), and the Ivy Room in Albany, CA (11/9). Erik Koskinen handles the low electric guitars on this tour, and John Convertino joins the band on drums in California.

Portland's fantastic Sam Weber opens the shows from Seattle to Portland, and joins the band on electric guitar (hiring people I like is the only way I know to make new friends) and Hood River is a split bill with our pal Garett Brennan. My very dear and particular friend, the author, poet, and fishing guide Chris Dombrowski – a man who has written such immortal lines as, rivers strewn with moonlight and discarded / shopping carts, mouths of springs choked / with forget-me-nots, long slavering rills / threading rusted culvert grates, rivulets / splitting thickets, and boulder-cured cataracts / pocked by sewers pissing virulent strains of Time – opens Missoula. I'm a strong believer in the notion that poems should be read – nay, declaimed, and at volume – in bars, for normal people in the current of life, and not in the fluorescent backwater function rooms of university campuses for people who stare or murmur instead of clapping. Join us.

MIDWEST / DAVE MOORE – In the first half of December, we'll be on tour in upper Midwest on a special run of shows with the great Dave Moore, an all-time hero and long time friend. I'll start out duo with Dave at The Trempealeau Hotel just north of La Crosse, WI (12/3), and the Oak Center General Store in Lake City, MN (12/5), before picking up the band and heading north to play the Cedar Lounge in Superior, WI (12/6), the Parkway Theater in Minneapolis, MN (12/7) and SPACE in Evanston, IL (12/8) and Atwood Music Hall in Madison, WI (12/12).

Dave opens the tour and joins the band on harp and accordion, and in the middle of it we'll all head down together to the Englert Theater in Iowa City for a show I organized, called MAGIC DUST: The Songs of Dave Moore (12/11/25), an all-star tribute featuring Dave with Greg Brown, Iris Dement, Bo Ramsey, Pieta Brown, Joe and Vicki Price, Kris Delmhorst, Erik Koskinen, David Huckfelt, Dustin Busch, David Zollo, and Phil Heywood, playing and singing their favorite Dave Moore songs, backed up by Dave himself, with me and my band. Will this be an historic event? Yes it will be. You won't probably see all these folks together on one stage again. Get after it. Myself, I'd buy a ticket just to hear Greg Brown sing Dave Moore. That's half of Mount Rushmore right there.

UNIVERSAL FIRE SOLO ACOUSTIC – I finally got around to printing this album on CD, and it's FOR SALE on the road and also in the STORE, right damn now.

Alright, that's not everything but it's more than enough. I wish you well, and hope I'll see you out there somewhere. If you have people in any of these towns, maybe send this letter along and tell them we're coming.

September 2025