Author Archives: John

                                   After the drought
                                   The river took
                                   Back everything.
                                        – James Galvin (“Child’s Play”)

When it comes to understanding,
we like shortcuts, give them names,
or better yet, another acronym

to memorize, to fall off our tongues
as if they mean something new
to this old planet circling the sun—

as if we haven’t time enough to pull
away from our frivolous business
to find the melody of syllables.

The long vowels of CIA & FBI
punctuate abruptly, like gunshots—
say no more! But after the flood

has cleaned out the banks,
we start over with a new slate
to make our marks upon—restringing

fences across old channels, we try
once more to make them easy to repair,
hold cattle and let the words flow.

                              I dress first putting on my socks
                              Then my shirt—I need good habits.
                                    – Gary Soto (“Dr. Freud Please”)

Shorts, shirt, jeans, socks and crocs
to stand before a fuzzy mirror,
I bang my gums and remember

Soto’s lines apply when my mind
is off—writing poetry, trying
to make more of the more mundane.

So much personified, all our little totems
a flutter in flight, hop from ground
to branch as if their brain were mine.

The blackbirds come in a mob
cackling for something sweet beneath
the Honey Locust dripping bloom

into a puddle of green. Junkos
watch from the rail, woodpeckers
stand in line for the leaky faucet,

a drop at a time. It’s easy to forget
who I am when I could have been
anything—I need good habits.

I love magical moments when the stars
seem to be aligned, and I help where I can
to get the glitter of some pixie dust on us

to stay awhile—like our accountant
who turned ninety at the Ides of April,
his calling for a lifetime. Like a brother,

he was fond of my mother, and you think
white Phalaenopsis, her favorite orchid
for his birthday, like the one she gave you

when your father died to welcome us home
after Elko, years after. His daughters
are flying, coming-in for the celebration.

Easy as a call to her florist, Mary Frances.
She tells me how she misses seeing my mother,
a fine lady. I tell her how we see her often,

how she visits us. Come again? and then
she understands—tells how it took a whole year
before she was able to let her mother in.

                                                             for Ed

1.

Easy-living where troughs and faucets leak,
where Cottontails lounge in the gooseneck’s
dust and shade with ground squirrels and quail—
Roadrunners pause and pass with limp lizards,

nest bound. A smear of downhill color
horses graze and walk around to water,
the only monkeyflowers left in the dry,
short-cropped grass, a beacon of smells

below the bellied tank bleeding tears
from a shank of hanging moss, reaching
for muddied ground—it drips,
as it dripped for years, crying for repairs.

2.

The ground comes alive with the scurry
of baby squirrels, Bobcats streak
and Ravens feast in the distance, even
the house cat forsakes fresh dirt—impacts

from the infrastructure of gophers
under construction, undermining
lawn and garden—for an easier catch.
Pinchers and tails of scorpions piled

in the guano of bats beneath the eaves
where ants pack the leftovers off—our eyes
are peeled for black widows and snakes—
for easy-living where wild congregates.

                                      Too poor to pay,
                                      Too rich to quit.
                                           – Velvet (“Gunsight Ridge”, 1957)

We tread water in a river of time,
run a ranch, raise cows, write
poetry in the gloaming, you and I—
without the weight of currency
to hold us under, hold us apart.

This evening of light draws the wild
from shady burrows and perches
to perform, to exalt the sky, to dance
with winged grace we emulate—
a brush of words to mark our passing.