Category Archives: Poems 2012

                                        i

In this dark moment, the East coast rolls
against old sheets, yawns and stretches
out of a million dreams at once, leaving

them to hang like ripe peaches for another
savoring—a great tree bent, limbs strained
with the weight of all that wishing. Yet

how many can be saved? The landscape
changes in a day with drought and hurricanes,
with once good men disguised in Washington

and we can’t seem to find our way back
to the orchard, to the tree before the fruit
falls and bruises, swarmed by feeding

gnats and yellow jackets as it decomposes.
If we could drive a stake, blaze a tree trunk,
leave bread crumbs and pray the pigeons

won’t consume our trail, the world
would be a better place—regularly revisiting
our secret fishing holes in peace.

                                        ii

When I was young I loved to hunt,
outthink the wild, read sign and project
trail’s end. I craved skirmishes with greedy

men, rebelled against almost anything
dishonest or unfair. But I am too old
for trouble now, weary of a game

to win, of chance or luck, of reaching
beyond mundane routines that offer
fleeting satisfaction, like a poem

tossed to the wind, like a mowed lawn,
mended fence or a freshly weeded garden
in the gloaming waiting for the dawn.

One of these days I will come back,
step down upon the peak of Sulphur Ridge
and let my feet slide upon the dry wild oats,

inhale their ripeness on my two-mile glide
to the creek and nap among the dark green
sycamores, be unseen in caves of shade.

Or should it be a rare November day
after a rain when it is gray and still, mist
clinging to the bare oaks on damp hills,

earthy perfume of wet dry grass in decay
that will bring seed to feed, that vital
beginning to every season annually.

Or Belle Point in the spring when I had you
captured in the pickup to look at cattle,
so proud of my colored cows standing

on the slope for big, long-eared calves.
The air is full of magic then towards the end
of March. We fell in love like April fools.

One of these days I will come back
like a rattlesnake, as the eyes and ears
of Tihpiknit waiting, deep in his dark den—

or a Canyon Wren calling, calling, calling
every wonder back to me. One of these days
I will come back for a poet’s guarantee.

Blame the bugs
on late spring rains—

clouds of leafhoppers,
grasshoppers in the house,

dawn’s flock of crows
on tall blond feed

armies of starlings
rising and lighting

in loose unison
to the gloaming—

but don’t dare complain
about late spring rains.

He will be hard to ship,
push up the chute, sun
glinting off the aluminum

some early morning soon—
to prod with whistles,
pokes and hollers,

confused for the first time
since he was a calf.
He wants to be

our pet forever, all
eight hundred pounds
within his blue roan hide.

1.

They come to recognize me now,
weaned calves around the feeder
as I unfold bales of leafy alfalfa,

watching busy hands and the attitude
of my hat, slowly lifting downcast
eyes to ask, ‘How’re we doing?’

Startling at first, this all-inclusive
‘we’—the clouds of grasshoppers,
swarms of bugs, the late spring rains.

                                        ~

2.

                    I slip off in 100-degree heat
                    with a Kubota-load
                    to change my water
                    on the pasture
                    because we can’t
                    do it all when it’s cool.

                    Gray Whiskers.
                    Old Scaly Face,
                    layer after layer
                    of new peels away

                                        in that zone
                                        near delirium

                    where we ignore the sun,
                    they like statues crowded
                    ‘round Old Shirttail Out—

                                        gravity, always
                                        gravity pushing
                                        my pants down,
                                        pulling at my flesh,
                                        wanting it back.

                                        ~

3.

If they were people,
I’d tidy-up,
unbuckle and unbutton,
start over again,
but this is how they see me:

                                                            something

consistent and congruent
they can trust
since losing mamas
they have forgotten
in this brave new world.

                                                             Suddenly they turn.
                    I stop. They come back toward me,
                    my window open to the glorious smell of horses.
                    I’m asking the gods to see them home.
                                        – Jim Harrison (“Night Creatures”)

Busy—Lord knows the gods stay busy in the wild,
or on the edge of it down country roads, day or night,
saving a snake or feeding a squirrel to black buzzards.

They tend to favor believers and seldom look
for converts with hands already full, and some
will work against you when you lose your compassion.

Sometime last night waiting for cars to pass,
a Barn Owl left his fencepost too late for an illuminated
mouse, swooped too low, too close to the lights

headed down the road. It’s a game, you know,
taking advantage of humans, and the gods love it—
love leaving little lessons like owl feathers.

In the dark, the raccoons have taken a page
from the coyote’s book: one to lead the dog off
to bark farther in the distance, while the rest

dine in the fruit trees. The news from Wall Street
is not unique when it interrupts our sweet dreams
of an apricot pie—just before we go back to sleep.

                                    I have been over the water
                                    and lived there all alone.
                                            – William Stafford (“Looking Across the River”)

Perhaps it was Ike Clark, decades
after he stepped off the train
in Exeter from Tennessee,

barefoot in bibs looking for work—
or the shack he shared with goats
and chickens, roosters crowing

in the citrus grove he earned.
I never saw a woman, though
he had grandkids that sometimes

waited with us at the stop sign
for the school bus, where he’d pass
early on his way home, alone

in his green, ‘52 Chevy heaped
with vegetables from the alley
behind the red brick Safeway

to feed his menagerie, horse, pigs
and a milk cow in makeshift pens
you could barely see from the road.

Millionaire hermit, he may as well
lived across the river, his flock
of guinea sentries scratching

beneath his orange trees,
the hollow and empty sounds
of peacocks crying at dawn.

                                             The world we all came from reaches out; its trees
                                             embrace; its rocks come down ready to cover
                                             us again. Moss clings to the feet and climbs
                                             carefully, protecting its own. It wants us back.
                                                                – William Stafford (“Over the Mountains”)

A moment’s escape, I scaled the fence, left the sand box
to the feral cats for the voices of men in the vineyard,
toward the purring of the 8N Ford pulling a wagonload
of grape stakes, toward the loud camaraderie of unshaven
Okies in faded bibs—‘Can’t Bust Em’ before I could read.

Cross arms and wire, box of staples and galvanized braces,
hatchets, hammers and cast iron mallets, tools and men edging
down each dormant vine row, drawing me, one gray December
day to leave my comfort and reach for some unique conceit,
ever-reminded of cat-killing curiosity, I stepped lightly

after the wagon wheel turned over one of my U.S. Keds,
soft cultivated loam beneath them both. It doesn’t matter
now that I swore I’d never tell my father, or what drew me
away from the fields under the guise of education, or how
my parents tried to raise me like a crop, worth something,

or why I returned to the ground that reached out to hold me,
to pull me safely within its vital truth and maze of intricacies.
That world I came from owns me now, keeps me busy believing
in more than man has built for God or profit, for speed
or convenience, just to become obsolete—it wants us back.