Randy Koch’s map across ‘the rutted sea” to promises of bounty in the furrowed black earth of the Minnesota prairie

Descendancy

At northern docks they boarded ships—
Patria, Donau, Gellert—
and rode the Elbe from Hamburg’s ports
out to sea and westward.

The passage ’cross the North Atlantic
lasted several weeks,
and poorer families stowed in steerage
found food and quarters bleak.

The stench of sweat and vomit
hung gravely in the air.
Children sagged in mothers’ arms;
parents haggled ’bout their share

of room along the railing
and quiet near the berths
while the crowded, unwashed farmers
talked of clean, black, fertile earth.                                        

Raise a cheer for New York Bay!
Hurrah for Ellis Island!
Hoist your baggage! Disembark!
Trace the sun to new lands!

Some settled in upstate New York,
Michigan, Illinois,
but western states held promises
of cheap land and employ.

Minnesota’s southern plains
sprawled open like a yawn.
Men dreamed of prosperous progeny
who’d till the land beyond.

Those farmers all whose blood is mine,
who crossed the rutted sea,
broke the prairie measured out
in manifest degrees.

Gangs of Belgians drawing plows,
their collars lathered white
and hooves the size of dinner plates,
turned day-lit grass to night.

Stark steeples rose above the fields
where furrows creased the earth
and crossed the land with righteousness
determined by our birth.

But sacred vows and promises
sworn to bind us always
unraveled in the want of land,
of ordered, dollared days.

Do not assume that Eden’s peace
prevailed among these men
whose homesteads fenced the land long roamed
by wanderers who then

surrendered to our white and might,
to greed, disease, and guns,
to gallows raised for thirty-eight
men hanged in the sun.

What bounty comes to those who work,
rewards for labor true?
What bounty but the price per head,
for scalps of hunted Sioux.

Just as settlers leveled aim
at raccoons, coyotes, fox,
they executed Little Crow,
and on a festooned box

exhibited his scalp and skull
for St. Paul’s citizens.
Thus, with humble pride we showed
how charitable are Christians.

Wherefore went love? I wonder now.
Whoso begat this place?
How came we through the swells and troughs
to rifle God’s pure grace?

Then, hazards countless stalked the years—
blizzards, sickness, drought.
Gathering clouds of insects tried
the faith of the devout.

Dirt-clotted spouts of twisters swung
loose from bruised-black skies.
The searing frost nagged like a scold;
sloughs swarmed with biting flies.

And death arrived by diverse routes:
burns and scarlet fever,
tuberculosis, cancer, stillbirth.
Lightning. Measles. Cleaver.

Despite the hardships faced by those
who sought a new life here,
who left the Old World’s constant wars,
they vowed to persevere.

They carved out cellars, raised new barns,
birthed children, horses, calves.
They sought the solace labor brings,
their weariness a salve

on callused palms and aching backs
bent before their years.
They bowed before their daily bread
and prayed away their fears.

But when the trials overwhelmed
their weary faith and hope,
a few found solace in the end
by train, by lake, by rope.

A woman left her kitchen chores
and walked water overhead.
A son found father in the barn
aloft and swaying. Dead.

Others, though, would persevere
and carry on the name
of families raised in Prussian states,
from whence my fathers came:

Tesch, Knuth, and Lindemann,
Vollmer, Thiede, and Meinert,
Rossbach, Genschow, Köenig, Koch,
Helmer, Beermann, Meyer.

This lineage—as my parents did—
kept to a steady route:
from farmer’s birth to christening
as Lutherans devout;

then, grammar school through eighth grade;
and instruction in the Word
and Catechism, Luther’s work,
until publicly confirmed.

The boys then worked on family farms
or as boarded hired hands.
Girls—like mothers—laundered, cleaned,
raised hens, cooked meals, and canned.

While men were drafted or joined up,
few thought to graduate.
Marriage, farm work, raising children
were accepted as their fate.

They watched the time pass steadily,
like searching western skies
for thunderheads in rainless years
or boxcars rolling by.

Count the ways to mark the ages
passed since they embarked.
Score the days of rustic sages
with signs no longer marked:

reckon years in crosscut stumps
and fall by frost’s first bloom;
age your mares by staring mouthward;
gauge the phases of the moon.

Concede the truth. Admit your line—
the generations all
that came before your minor role
and endured through each fall.

But ever if a cry be raised
and harnessed to the air,
let the dead from times afar
tell the stories buried there.