Category Archives: Poems 2013

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.

                                   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.