Monthly Archives: December 2011

Some things need to be saved, but not poetry’s
shuffle of words to fit an illusive moment
like shackles and chains bound in a book,

not the euphoric epiphanies we stumbled onto
out on the trail alone, or running the dark roads
between settlements of distant light, not those

rambling soliloquies when the radio fades
to poor company. It’s a solitary game
on the other side of numbers, pat answers

and scientific proof—primal sounds to mark
a trek beyond the veil of certainty shuffled
with the landscape and its latest inhabitants.

                    He chooses a slim volume of Sapphic verse
                    from the nightstand, imagines skinny girls
                    on a Greek isle in the middle of the Mojave…
                                        – Red Shuttleworth (“Gabby Hayes (1951)”)

Whir of feathers from the brush, moments
can escape like quail in all directions—
the heart leaps backwards, freezes

as they buzz off to fractured rocks, or
we can read long-limbed verse, watch
sycamores shed enflamed leaves,

first hard rain after the first hard frost,
near the solstice, to dance naked
in the mist of morning, most years.

Beyond the bright lights, a man can
go a little crazy, make do and make sense
of things he thinks he sees, believing.

Somewhere in our brains are big
empty socks that hang from a mantle
with impossible names yet to be filled.

Looking forward to the last cows
among the fractured rock towns
and a wild band of oaks, at ease,

a Red Tail shadow streams
silently along the new green
between trees, suddenly—

as if playing tag, counting
coup with our silhouette: man
and beast. Why look up?

After awhile the hills wrap
around you, hold life secure:
the rock, hawk and oak tree

still, sharp ridges holding
our eyes. At these corrals
we are both small and safe,

always. It takes years
to be taught, to wonder
and recognize good fortune

with the fade of old faces
and all the good horses
that have danced here.

                                         for Earl

Kyle Loveall & Douglas Thomason. Earl McKee photo

                    A little too abstract, a little too wise,
                    It is time for us to kiss the earth again.
                               – Robinson Jeffers (“Return”)

But we may not have the currency
to invest anymore, now that town
has rebooted our minds, changed

the circuitry, on feed in Fat City,
right off I-5. Not even a glance up
at the smooth Coalinga Hills

to graze old times, find a canyon
to get lost in. We may be too
well-bred to return and get by.