Author Archives: John

Endorphin bound, we humans
sometimes pack compressed loads,
test the fabric of mind and flesh

like the old joggers focused
on the haze at road’s end
as footfalls pump within their brains.

Blaze orange and magenta tunics,
fists like pistons she can feel
in the corner of her pasture,

one lags the other, but coming
closer, blowing harder
as she wheels to get away

through two fences, wire screeching
into the roadway. They pursue her
without stopping for two miles—

before she gets to ground she doesn’t
know, then leaps another to get free.
It’s contagious, all that determination

up and down a road that is no secret
to armies of Harleys and bright-hued
bicyclists, daredevils on crotch rockets,

four-wheel drives dragging trailers
of more toys within the stream of weekend
Christians speeding towards their God.

We have become the obstacles, or part
of the scenery they never see. We pray
before we cross the road to changing times.

We awake again surprised, full of wonder
with the first and second barefoot step,
not quite ready for reality to ambush us

with awe. Changing water on the pasture,
an egret lifted above me from a pond
of cattails and coots, redwings and bullfrogs—

flapped and circled to stand off in the dry grass
until I passed through this little heaven,
this inefficient accumulation of water,

to return when I was gone. There is no reason
to fear here, each of us tending to our business,
staying out of one another’s way in a dance

I haven’t learned in town. A man must
get out early in the summer, make necessary
circles that he can’t pay anyone else to do.

Forty years ago, I could
lift a bale to my shoulder
and walk off. I didn’t care,
my back was strong.
I could fly afoot
across uneven country,
gun in hand, outrun hogs
for whatever reason
that now escapes me, long
relegated to the ridiculous.

I have to teach myself,
each step measured
chore to chore,
my daily circle—
like old dogs mark
before darkness.
Hooks in hand,
plant feet squarely,
face and bow
before the bale,
stab and straighten,
lift and roll
above the bad knee—
then engineer into place,
tip and teeter
until enough to feed
the bawling calves
in the weaning pen.
They must eat.

It didn’t take long to get here.
So much concentration now
that I have forgotten almost all
of what happened in between.

Someone on the other end knows my name, maybe
barely speaks English. “Who’s calling?” My ears strain
to be polite until I’m sure enough to be rude.

They’re talking another war, another 10-year skirmish
somewhere far away for young boys, and girls now,
for old men generals with chess board tactics

fighting for another Taco Bell on another corner
of the planet far away from Wall Street,
from the here and now—from these good cows.

Another child goes missing. Some crazy with a gun
goes hunting at a school, or a shopping mall
or a drive-by to electrify a night across the tracks,

children huddled under beds I don’t want to know about.
Someone on the other end is selling something for a living
I can’t imagine pays any more—than in profanity.