Category Archives: Poems 2011

                                A man might own the land,
                                but the land also owned him.
                                            – Elmer Kelton (“The Good Old Boys”)

Years across the fire,
the underside of pine
licked by orange and blue
cat tongues, a steady dancing
reflected in our eyes,

we know what goes on
down the mountain
on the racetracks—
breeze in the cedars,
relentless tumbling
of the river, beyond
the static of their motors’
Geiger-counter metronomes.

Afoot or horseback,
these steep reaches laugh
at the clock, at convenience—
each step in scree another glimpse
of permanence, another look
at the rock we dwell upon—
granite peaks like islands thrust
beyond the seas of changing times.

Years across the fire,
safe within eternity,
we are immortal—
long moments free.

Within walls of bare rock, no urgency
to improve the moment, no cell phone call
for plastic gadgets to hold us connected –

thin swirl of smoke, black and blue
coffeepot, wine jug passed— enough
and all we need to please our gods

circled ‘round the fire. From the ash
of a hundred years exposed, pine needles
and cedar cones piled for banked coals,

they have risen from this midden since
we were children— fathers and grandfathers
buried beneath our feet, free of the flat

dreams farmed with this slow snowmelt
leaking, slipping and dripping into the roar
and foam of the Rio de los Santos Reyes,

of the Kings wearing cold granite smooth
that dares and intimidates the soul— cures
the sinful and the satisfied with elsewhere.

                                                for Tim and Maggie

Come close to earth, young Red Tails roost
on fence posts near the water trough
and rock pile towns of ground squirrels –

and the number of young, half-grown dumb,
diminishes. So addicted to these convenient
meals that fail to look up, the splotchy hawks

are almost tame, almost ignore approach,
feathers like a duster fluffed before they glide
indignantly to another easy, fast food perch.

Every spring we’d ride with sacks of yellow
grain slung from our saddle horns, 10-80
spooned to huge colonies that honeycombed

the ground, come alive, that moved in waves.
Our heavy thumb upon the balance beam,
the poison killed and killed again, coyotes

bobcats and hawks. Only the number of live
rodents and red-headed turkey vultures grew
with the stench from rock piles dressed in black.

No different than the duck and dally days
driving to a steer, craving horns in an average –
the heady rush of both cigarette and snuff

in the box before the nod, summer nights
addicted to a dream, going down the road,
leaving work and winter watergaps undone.

O’ wild, sweet youth that could not see
beyond the flexed and postured pulse
of faster times, fleeting moments so soon

forgot if cowboys make old cowmen.
Too clearly seen, I judge myself
in their reflection – distort my free

and easy disregard for life that
only time distills to guilt and luck –
and pray, as much, for all of them.

Delights as small as quail
born on the run between
thick, yellow forests

of dry brittle grasses, tiny
coveys trailing one another’s
dust into hiding amid

imperative titters, little
hearts-a-thump with panic
in bare, brand-new chests –

innocence and instinct
stirred to forever flutter
before they can fly.

Summer dawn, wild oats blond,
they wake from dreams beyond
ridgeline silhouettes and think

of me, or someone like me
with sweet alfalfa leaf – young cows
to be, their flesh fills, springs

pink around me and I am pleased.
They feel it as I move through
our congregation on this hillside.

The road below fills with pickups
towing toys, the purr of hopped-up
four-wheel drives, tents and trailers

like blood pumped into the mountains
where snowmelt leaks and tumbles
into treacherous streams, rivers

hungry for adventurous ignorance –
her breasts heave. These girls and I
have closed that other world away

and speak to the moment, study
one another’s movement. I dream
of them – and them of me.

Two tons, heads still locked
after the three mile drive
of cows and calves was done,

swirling bellows and dust
left behind to settle possession
of what was gone –

flat constant contact,
pole to nose, black silhouettes
standing exhausted alone.

It took a week
before they could see –
blind testosterone.

Dark-thirty, each morning starts a new
poem before saddle and gather, before
crossing the creek, before dashing

bovine dreams from grassy beds –
before accountants and attorneys flesh
a sum of days into numbers and words

for someone else – that grand game with
faceless authority that we kneel before
we quietly slip away from the bunch.

Are we so different from the beasts
we care for, have we evolved as much
to find our niche of peace? I wonder

with some envy as bands of females
move among the wild, make homes
and families for a lifetime, adapt

within a place on this earth – free,
but for two or three days a year –
to direct each step just to lie together

and silently gossip amid the sweet
scent of chewed cuds trapped beneath
the canopied shade of a buckeye tree.

Dark-thirty, before daylight shatters
overhead and the phone rings, I feel
my way to mark an escape uphill.