Monthly Archives: March 2011

‘Barefoot kid in overhauls right off the train from Tennessee,’
she told me, ‘come to California looking for work,’ to Exeter
– The Emperor Grape Capital of the World – a long, lifetime
ago of narrow rows and teams of mules skinned for a dollar
a day. Old to me in ‘56, driving slowly his fairly new, green
Chevy pickup full of vegetables, crates of lettuce, melons
and fruit from the alley where the red brick Safeway stood
for prosperity, when he passed by the bus stop in wet, winter fog,
to wave between his place and theirs, between the big house
surrounded by roses on Marinette and his twenty acres of citrus,
alive with roving bands of multi-colored chickens stirring leaves
with the meowing peacocks (less the one on the chimney Granddad
shot and had hell getting out), stray pigs, goat and milk cow
mowing weeds – a free and loose menagerie making a living
in the orange grove growing around his house and poor corrals
where he fed spoils from town. On cold nights with smudge pots
lit like glowing soldiers, their red-feathered hats down every road,
around every orchard in the frosty black, stars twinkling quickly,
roar of wind machines, flat-head Fords with props on towers turning,
stirring the air, Dad and I would visit his lean-to shed, straw bed
along the road, brandy and his two red-bellied sentries posted
to keep him warm, that finally caught fire – bright ellipse over
silhouettes of orange trees – we drug him out alive. It was
the dirty cheesecloth when he skimmed cream every morning
that inspired the new bathtub she ordered and had delivered
to his house and her walk next door, some months later to
investigate why he was not clean. Chickens pecking at
the table, billy goat beyond the open door she found it installed
outside to make moonshine. Saved his money and died a millionaire.

Runt of the litter, long-haired gray tom
that will never make it here, bent tail
riding parallel beside him, you plugged

into whoever’d take him –
now whines high on a log end
beneath the gutter in the rain, alone
disgruntled with the weather.

His family has abandoned him again –
not even the dogs are interested
in a stare down, each meow complains.

There is no mistake that we are here
to work together, to hold the fragile in
abeyance and focus on routines we know –

to care with sure and calloused hands
and sort unspoken grief to unseen pens
to haul home like our own stray cattle

when it’s done. Scattered by distance
apart from the world and its tragic
consequences – its sad ambitions

and addictions – we come to celebrate
and revere our skills with the unpredictable
and rise to persevere as one. Sometimes

the heart, or is it the soul that shudders,
or is it the moon at its perigee that pulls
emotions up like swirling tides around us

that we dare not speak for fear of hearing
our own voice quake? Is it age worn thin?
We work around raw and tender parts,

find new ways to hold our rope and rein
until time heals the hole in each of us –
neighbors for a long time – it is our time.

The branding pictures show gray
on most of my face, translucent quill
of Great White Egret stabbed

into the band of a worn black hat
among the young men – boys really,
full of it – all that tension stretched

like calves between horses and saddle
horns, turned loose to find its way.
Mostly, I forget – wing feather streaming

jauntily – an oxymoron on creaking knees
overlooked as another evolving casualty.
Like your bouquet of turkey feathers

we collected, scattered in the grass,
reunited in a living room vase after
a frantic death, each new feather

becomes a sign of surviving friction
in my mind – a prolonged life worn
with respect and envy for flight.

How he had hoped his words might
turn a smile, eyes cast down to rise
and meet somewhere beyond

with something new to share. But
she hid her face behind her hand
instead – as he stared off, pursing

lips into a silent whistle, picturing
it all again, replaying and weighing
each enunciation, wondering why

space between their horses grew.
Portraits, not wide-looped long-shots,
but up-close expression zoomed

across the pen through loose reins, tight
ropes and smoke to the peripheral asides –
faces to later read between the lines.

February 6, 2011