On The Keep by Paul Bowers
by Benjamin Myers, Oklahoma Poet Laureate Emeritus
Hi, I’m Benjamin Myers, a former Oklahoma Poet Laureate here for Poetry on the Plains.
Today I’d like to share with you a poem by the excellent Oklahoma poet, Paul Bowers. Bowers is recently retired from teaching writing and literature at Northern Oklahoma College and lives with his wife on a ten-acre farm in Ringwood, Oklahoma. He is the author of three books of poetry and one book of short stories. He is also the founder of Turning Plow Press, an Oklahoma-based publishing company.
In the “The Keep” from Bowers’ 2018 collection, Occasional Hymns, the poet focuses our attention on a familiar sight in northern Oklahoma wheat country: a grain storage unit. The sight might be familiar, but Bowers helps us see it with a new sense of reverence and solemnity. Here’s the poem:
The Keep
The white cathedral of the granary
absorbs the morning light and purifies it.
Belly full of breadstuff and given to long lulls
of concrete silences, it sleeps with the seasons,
stirred in June by late-Spring wheat
poured from an auger’s iron gullet.
This is unleavened wealth,
riches cellared in fervent darkness
absent a requisite guardian dragon—
just Roy Berkshire, part-time night watchman,
with long-handled flashlight, a steady mug of instant coffee,
and the dutiful unnamed tabby cat,
tasked to frighten the smallest of night worshippers
that move from portal to hidden portal,
noses twitching with wild faith,
seeking slender entrance to the keep.
I love the way this poem mixes literal and closely observed detail with imaginative metaphor. Comparing the granary to a cathedral allows the agricultural structure a sacred dignity, which is reinforced by the reference to “unleavened wealth.” The more commonplace details of Roy with his flashlight, coffee, and tabby cat are lifted by association into the realm of the sacred, and thus we see them with the dignity they deserve. I’ve known many a Roy Berkshire, and I am glad to see his faithfulness in duty—even if only “part time”—honored here.
Even the mice take on the seriousness of pilgrims, and we can’t help but root for them as they, too, search for the sacred, fora sense of meaning that is as urgent as food. The openness of wheat country, the vastness of the sky above it, add to that pilgrim feeling at the poem’s end. The granary sits in a landscape already sacred, the kind of wilderness the mystic enters in the same spirit as Bowers’ mice.
I am quite taken as well with Bowers’ personification of the granary in the second stanza. This personification, rather than taking us away from the cathedral imagery of the opening lines, augments the sense of sacredness and dignity. The granary is given the kind of personality we imagine for Notre Dame or Chartres, cathedrals that are almost a living presence embedded in the history of a particular place.
It is often the task of great poetry to see the transcendent in the mundane, to re-enchant the world with a depth of meaning we miss when we take things for granted. In other words, it is the poet’s job to say “look.” Paul Bowers does that job extremely well in this poem and throughout his body of work.
I’m Benjamin Myers for “Poetry on the Plains,” chatting with you from Chandler, OK.
POETS ON THE PLAINS HOST
Benjamin Myers is the Crouch-Matthis Professor of Literature and the director of the Great Books Honors Program at Oklahoma Baptist University. A former poet laureate of Oklahoma, he is the author of four books of poetry. His work has appeared in many journals and magazines, including Image, The Yale Review, 32 Poems, Rattle, and The South Carolina Review, and his sonnet sequence, Black Sunday, was praised by The Wallstreet Journal as one of the “five best books on the dust bowl.” He is a contributing editor for Front Porch Republic and lives in Chandler, OK. His most recent book of poems is The Family Book of Martyrs (2023), and his second book of nonfiction, Ambiguity and Belonging, was recently published by Belle Point Press.
Benjaminmyerspoetry.com
OKLAHOMA – FEATURED POET
Paul Bowers, a retired college teacher, lives with his family on a small farm in northwest Oklahoma. He is the author of a short story collection, Like Men, Made Various (2006), and three poetry collections: The Lone, Cautious, Animal Life (2016), Occasional Hymns (2018), and Ten Acres of the Universe (2022). His new collection of short fiction, entitled We’ll All Be Better People, will be released in Fall, 2026. Bowers is also the founder and editor of Turning Plow Press, specializing in poetry and short fiction by writers living and writing in the Midwest and Southwest. Recent publications include a book-length poetry collection, The Lone, Cautious, Animal Life (purple flag press, D. 2016).Find more at https://www.turningplowpress.com/
