Monthly Archives: December 2012

Mud and wet outside, short glass with ice,
Straight Kentucky Bourbon afternoon
between rains forecast for the next two weeks—
cattle fed and work done around a nap
and half-a-dozen postponed phone calls,
greening ridgetops cut sharply out of a gray sky,
I play self-indulgently on paper. Naked,
white slope of Redwood Mountain peeking
downcanyon at the pool of Blue Oaks, all
but undressed when the ground drinks
and promises prosperity: add water to
instant grass, lush color almost every year—
yet no two the same. The old sycamores burn
fat flames in the cold along the creek, loose
fire at their feet, glow in the woodstove.

It may be unnecessary to cut the dead up, stack
and pack the ashes out just to stay warm, waste
hours that could be spent consuming, charging
more for energy other than our own.

The sun finds a hole, sets pink on the snow
like an iridescent beacon at tunnel’s end
upcanyon—summer grass for Cutler cattle—
not bad today, even though the world has
gone to hell and won’t last long at this rate,
playing policeman for the planet. Everyone
has a big gun nowadays. It doesn’t pay
to have wealth, fame or power when the game
is ‘bout over, if there is no future left.

We manage somehow, patch the hull, survive
the egos and evolve quickly—seldom a good sign
unless you are a ravenous pest or mutating disease.
We mustn’t forget what has forged and tempered us,
drawn our genetics to this spot in time and space—
assuming reason, purpose and the all the rest of it.
We try once more with another miracle of rain.

                    Just write on my tombstone, Lord if I get a tombstone,
                    Or maybe just a honky-tonk wall,
                    That he was crazy for ladies, Lord, and guitars and babies
                    And a damned old fool for the waltz.
                              – Kell Robertson (“I Always Loved A Waltz”)

I imagine Kell and Scott have lots to talk about
in the poets’ corner of eternity, sorted-off
Bright Halo Street, jamming like they did
in that Durango motel, circling a gallon jug
around a dark, smoky room in gulps
of mutual approval, red wine, poetry and song
that no one will remember when I’m gone.

It will be good to see them on the curb,
guitar and backbeat drum, writing songs
for the small crowd down at Judas Tavern—
it’s an easy but sad place to write from.
We talked about it, asked honestly
if we don’t derail our own trains
just to have something new to write about?
Something good pulled from deep within
the desperate core of Everyman and Woman.

Ferlinghetti got it, saw poetry lose touch—
but not Kell and Scott: they kept the sweet
and weak away, didn’t play fancy shindigs.
Fence lines sag along the black bottom
farm land in southeast Kansas before
they become supermarket parking lots, but
“all I can see is what we’ve lost.”

                                        for Kell Robertson and Scott Preston

*     *     *     *     *     *     

from Dry Crik Review, Fall 1991

THE NEW MIGRATION

They escape to the central
Idaho Rockies
900 miles from the main office
in downtown L.A.
140 miles from the nearest
major airline
14 miles from the airport
three-quarters of mile up some
narrow draw
where they drop seven figures
on 6 or 8 thousand square feet
on a streambank
they’ll use a dozen times a year.
They install digital
burglar alarm & security systems
intercoms & push button combinations
that automate a massive gate
fashioned from the rustic hewn timbers
& a live in caretaker who doubles
as a trespasser heavy. Their
phone number is unlisted
no number on the gate
the driveway curves into infinity
six months of the year it’s
impassable with snow
& they bitch about why their Fedex
is guaranteed by noon instead
of 10:30.

                              – Scott Preston

THE OLD MAN GOES HOME

Under the discount store
the fast food place
the furniture outlet
under all that asphalt
is one of the best chunks
of black bottom farm land
in southeast Kansas.
My granddad grew corn
wheat, oats and alfalfa,
rotating the crops by
his almanac and the taste
of the dirt, and there
under that corner
my grandma’s garden grew.
The house was somewhere
near the bicycle rack
and the barn was where
they have that bank
of video games.
Under all this asphalt and concrete
plastic and steel, I learned to cut
a calf, learned to drive a team of horses,
learned to work in this earth
and in that barn, learned
from a third cousin who
teetered on the edge of womanhood
another meaning for kisses
beyond the peck on the cheek
I got from grandma.
I close my eyes and see it,
butt my way under that old Jersey cow
squirt the hot steaming milk
into the cold tin bucket, hear
the hogs snorting around for slops
we saved for them.

I open my eyes and almost
get run over by a housewife
with a buggy full of disposable diapers
and sugar-coated cereals.

The security guard takes my arm, asks
if I’m alright, leads me out into the parking lot
asks me what I’m doing there if I’m not
going to buy anything.

I’m visiting my granddad’s farm I say
underneath all this crap
is the sweetest little farm
in southeast Kansas.

Walking away
into the shimmering heat
rising from the parking lot
I swear I hear
grandma calling us for supper.
There’ll be beans and cornbread
and iced tea…tomorrow we’ll start
plowing the lower forty.
Then we’ll come home and sit
on the front porch, watching the dogs
playing in the yard, dreaming
of going to town next week
to sell some hay and get
a store-bought hat
to wear at the dance at the Grange Hall.
Maybe my cousin will be there
and she’ll teach me more
about this kissing business.

Right now
Looking back at the parking lot
full of people doing something

all I can see is what we’ve lost.

                              – Kell Robertson

                                        Both man and cat are bathed in pleasant
                                        insignificance, their eyes fixed on birds and stars.
                                                            – Jim Harrison (“Searchers”)

And when we do look up, unplug our eyes from electronics,
disconnect and free our friends stored inside pocket devices—
the stage is a blur, a swirl of colors, tilting, we must navigate

and find a rhythm we can move to. Focus comes slowly,
footing falters and we are lost for a moment outside
ourselves to reach for the railing, reeling in another world.

A wave of gray rolls across the yard, a covey of round hens
and strutting fat cocks, topnotches bobbing, pecking, watching
for the cat, invading the brown winter lawn as if we were not here,

not responsible for this destination they act like they own.
Even the woodpeckers test the logs since we put the pellet gun
away. The wrens work the window screens, we have become

just another tree among millions, another weakening stand
in this canyon trying to get along with our closest neighbors,
who entertain us constantly. We are the audience, not the stars.

She wants to move from Minot
to a city that can hold her
attention, to have it all
within a half-hour’s drive—
and I listen, remember
gliding through L.A. in the 60s.

How we must crave
to be entertained, to feel
the latest and the best art forms
going down the road—
to find quiet neighborhoods
close to the action.

She is young with a baby.
The map unfolds, roads
like spokes, they focus
West away from snow.
There was a time, I guess,
digging postholes in the sun,

miles from town, I longed
to rub against the herd, to stir
the city’s fire. Driving home
the long way, facing headlights
of semis hauling oranges
before the rain, Saturday night

along the ditch we watch
for drunks through Yettem
and Seville—all the excitement
we want escaping Fresno
and Highway 99.
We crave our wood stove.

                                                 for Jamee

Thatched and lashed with horsehair
thread, even well-built nests
have casualties, tip in a storm,

spill family overboard, and we
remain to make repairs – find reason,
where so often there is none.

If we have love, we have no choice
but to fall with them, over and over
into the void – and we do it,

not to savor grief, but to collect
what parts we can, to piece our nest
back-together again.

PRAYER

A prayer saved for those
subject to the senseless,
the unexplained, the never
                    to be resolved pain
                    that will shape them
with every throbbing ache
in this flesh – a prayer pulled
                    from mountaintops
                    surviving storms.

A prayer saved for the living
left to grieve the unexplored
alone to find themselves –
                    yet never more
                    the same.
A prayer saved for tenderness
and strength, for love and faith
                    that will endure
                    in time.

We repost these poems for the community of Newtown, Connecticut. Originally dedicated to Jeff and Alie McKee in December 2010.

The bulls have strayed, left steep terrain
where cows graze ridgetops since the rain,
bellyflopped fences to peruse the heifers

sequestered in the flat. Above the lake
I navigate translucent gray eclipsing hillsides,
calling blindly in the fog, listening

for an answer—almost like praying—trying
to gather cows and calves to hay before
putting one bull back, hoping a herd of his own

will hold him. A good exercise for the Sabbath,
before fixing fences. Everything moves slower
in the fog, I remember, watching the fuzzy

silhouette of a man in December driving a stake
with a sledgehammer, hearing the strike of steel
upon steel at the top of his next arc, when a boy.

A calf answers somewhere above, then unseen hooves
tumble sod nearby. Gradually from out of the ashen
gray, a few pairs materialize, plodding before me.