Category Archives: Poems 2013

I thumb through the American Poetry Review
looking for a poet to like, scanning newsprint
for shape and size, open space, shorter lines—

for that brave twist of perception that strums
a new chord, but most of my contemporaries
are busy with how they imagine the details

ought to be, or try to shock me with profanity
I used loosely at seven not knowing why.
But there’s always one or two to focus on

and big ads for MFA programs, poets-
in-residence I never heard of, faculty
just like me, learning how to write.

But a poet arrives when listed as visiting—
the name that draws tuition for a stipend
like lecture tours for retired politicians,

but far more inspiring. This is the end
of the rainbow in a great poet’s life,
shuffling words to a roomful facing fame

before it slumps at its desk, or luckier
to wander off into demented landscapes
to suppose it penned its own prize.

                        And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in the love of man,
                            a clever servant, insufferable master.
                        There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught—
                            they say—God, when he walked on earth.
                                          – Robinson Jeffers (“Shine, Perishing Republic”)

How yet we cycle back to see the love of man bloom,
time and again, trapped on this planet spinning in space
with all its wars and ricochets, its plagues and tragedies—
that wonderful yearning to please like good dogs!

How the angels must envy us and sigh, especially in spring.
They have escaped and hate their detachment, cannot feel
rivers run through flesh, and they will suffer everlasting
life without needs, without winter’s frozen ground.

What clever genius, I suppose, to repopulate our space
to crowd us inward, to speculate in safe repose
and say, write poetry or paint a rose to give away—
time and again, trapped on this planet spinning in space.

We think of them with each lesson learned—
never too old until we decompose like they have
to reach from branches, look down from ridges.
We are a pagan lot, especially at brandings

when the sap runs uphill to flower and bloom,
color aspirations and more urgent dreams. They
remember how it was with dramas of weather
that with the local gossip could cost a ranch.

Not much has changed but the time frame,
our subterfuge of concurrent diversions
ricocheting, end over end, whining into space
from the rockpiles we’re huddled within—

that black and white Western transformed
in living color, high-definition details
that could still kill us—they are grinning
and amused—we are the entertainment now,

dodging bullets, digging deeper in the ground
that becomes our flesh, that becomes them—
just dirt dependent on whims of the weather.
And that’s the funny part—in the end.

It must be spring after the parade
of dry cold fronts and little rain—
even the cows look up
and down brown south slopes,
short-cropped and brittle blades
curled and fragile, given-up
to look like bare ground—
burnt hard dirt angled
to face the sun full-on. Done.

We needed rain, but
I don’t remember praying
much, mostly hoping the cold
would release its grasp
of cows and calves in snow—
our freeze-dried beef on the hoof
feeling betrayed with not enough
loads of hay hauled up the hill.
We, not God, feel guilty.

No young man’s game,
unless cowboying for wages,
no two years the same,
we look ahead desperately,
chase Accuweather to the equinox
to see how bad it gets to be—
how soon we wean and ship
light calves, cull cows deep
to stay another season.

Even the finches are confused,
flit nervously in the rafters
before courting—no one’s
making plans this spring,
                         except for Robbin
                         in the garden
                         planting seed.
                         It must be spring.
                         We must believe.

It may be frightening to think
of a boy with rifle slung
from one arm, hitchhiking
with the other, or shotgun
laid across the handlebars
after school on country roads
to waterholes they knew
and had permission to hunt.

Farmers and ranchers were
in demand in those days,
sorted by disposition
outside the classroom—
we all knew who not to ask.
Small chores for only one
or two good boys was all
they took in exchange.

It was a simple time
despite the violence
of TV black and whites.
All our parents knew
of one another, weighed
rumor with responsibility—
and we kept them happy
just to have a place to hunt.

                         It was like a fistful
                         Of nettles.
                              – James Galvin (“The Red Telephone”)

Into a purple wine bottle from the bare shores
of Biarritz, I rolled and poked a note and corked it—
believed the currents that tugged within might deliver
me and proclamations of love. I was thirteen.

Before the telegraph sang eerily across the plains,
young men slapped leather to California, let hat brims
bend for pennies to deliver messages, a fistful
of nettles that when gripped tightly will not sting.

At the end of the party line, there were no secrets,
yet nothing was ever clear—very little love
or enlightenment—mostly static on one end
or the other, especially when it really rained.

No excuses left, no bare wire, no Indians—
I am now tethered: fair game, a sitting duck
behind an answering machine. Almost free,
I delight at the scratchy sounds of a fistful.

Living here, I have the time and opportunity,
the perfect chain saw and count the signs
on pressure treated 4 x 4s—make a night plan

to cut them in half. I love the details
of temptation and all the symbolic approval
any outlaw needs to speak louder than words,

than a letter distant authority will not read
nor even try to understand. I love to dream
so righteously, but have grown tame

in my old age, tamer than the vandals
who have preceded me to remove four,
and perforate another with a forty-five.

Living here, I have the time and opportunity
to ride temptation any where I want—
to fully appreciate the expression of others.

‘NO PARKING’

We stay our ground, claim our space
with shadows moving beside us, part of
the shade it takes to raise a cow on grass—
but of all the gods, we believe in rain.

Roots too deep to drink and chant,
to wave our hands at heaven, we wait
assured like old oaks certain, push
tender leaves like we always have—

despite the sounds of our unknown
future waiting in the dark ahead.
Blind faith becomes a habit for wild
inhabitants beneath the wandering path

of clouds, we fluff pillows and make
our beds as if we might awake
to the perfect season for native grass
that has adapted—like we always have.

                              I wasn’t being patient—just slow.
                                        – Tony Rabb (Greasy 2013)

His loop lays just long enough to pick-up a second foot
before going to the fire, an acquired art that we appreciate
when the calves are big and feeling good in the spring.

Most drawing Social Security, we’ve grown gray
in these corrals, not near as quick to get our slack
and dally as in the old days, our hoots and hollers

not near as loud—yet still in the middle of no where.
Eagles must wonder how much longer we’ll carry on
this ceremony, gathering cows and calves to brand

in these corrals, looking down from their rock
on the mountain. The old oaks have given-up
some shade, lost limbs corded-up for decades

of branding fires—yet remember the stories like
Homer prone to pontificate, propped against the trunk
as a rattlesnake slowly coiled between his legs.

A fine line between patient and slow, we know
our ground and where the cattle used to break,
but don’t try anymore—all pleased to find our speed.

As hot as I can stand,
elbows propped on squeaky knees,
morning showers stream my back
to penetrate and loosen the grip
of the great white cloud
claiming my spine
complaining before day begins.

I was not raised the easy way
of spendthrifts in town, learned
the value of a dollar an hour
shoveling the 1942 flathead Ford
dump truck full of loose red clay
to keep us busy between
moving sprinkler pipes
morning and night, all summer
on the 120 acres of green pasture
for weaned calves—we only dreamed
of machinery, of men on backhoes
my father didn’t need to pay
ten bucks when he had us.
All that character dumped
in a hole that needed dirt.

Twenty years my senior,
resting between bunches
of soggy A.I. calves
watching sons and wives,
grandsons and their wives,
reload vaccine guns, stoke
the fire and sharpen knives
as his great-grandkids hang
from the fence outside the pen,
he rises to tell me something funny—
                     just how happy
                     he is to be alive.

                                      for Frank Ainley