Category Archives: Poems 2010

                                                 The world looks
                    tame, but it might go wild, anytime.
                              – William Stafford (“Torque”)

One can’t blame the planet
trying to find its balance,
or wanting to buck loose the load:
daily megatons of consumption
and our never-ending refuse.

Always the would-be trainers
picking at a colt, raking a rowel
and hard in the mouth, always a hole
to escape to. “If he don’t buck,
he sure ought to,” Earl hollers
across the pen to an old showoff
mounting on a loose cinch humping
into a tangle of rusty barbed wire
frozen around its forelegs.

At the heart of this world, wild
and dark extremes are listening,
waiting to fill new holes in the light.
One can’t blame the planet,
or even humanity—it is a perfect
balance of imperfections, just
waiting to go wild, anytime.

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.

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.

                                            – for Alie and Jeff

We’ve come together this far –
the storm is done, but for the
leaking off hillsides, rivulets

turned clear in starlight
falling into a grumbling torrent,
cleaning house, reasserting

elbow room into the silt.
She is the last word, boss
in this canyon, come hell

or flood and we grin, admire
her spunk – not too old to buck
and run. Hope rides on gravity,

the equation of extremes
cut into this landscape
validated before us – and we pray

to all things wild for one last
tantrum, one last reason
to let her be before we go.

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.

                                                                                    The dead,
                        too, denying their graves, haunt
                        the places they were known in and knew,
                        field and barn, riverbank and woods.
                                                – Wendell Berry (“2008, X.”)

Even now the headstones claim
little flats beneath nameless draws
either side of the house, rough

granite boulders set at the head
of deep holes filled for horse and dog –
where the deer lay down to shade

when I was a boy, and women healed
the spirit, burning sage, chanting
until they fell asleep. Hollow ground

to horses’ hooves where my children
played pretend, those great imaginings
that beg to fly – now walk their sons,

listening – feet wet in grass.
To come home for Christmas can be
a gift – so many voices welcoming.