Category Archives: Poems 2013

                         they looked out over the earth,
                         and the north wind felt like the truth.
                                    -William Stafford (“Our People”)

We ride under the circling killdeer
cry, almost always looking upstream first—
to the north of where we are
and what comes from the sky.

Beneath the current, a rock and cobble
bottom that horses can’t always see—
they feel their way, stub toes
trusting, splashing in the spring.

Where sand meets the gravel,
wounded killdeer dance and cry
emphatically, turn brown feathers out
to drag upon the ground.

We pair them up like cattle
and search for speckled eggs,
always glancing to the north
to feel what’s coming our way.

We can’t help but dream
of what we don’t have:
light at night, darkness
at the end of days.

What genius to know that
we’ll never escape
ourselves, what just reward
to keep coming back

to live in what’s leftover.
It doesn’t hurt to invest
time in a nest, to create
space for the soul—

offer something for the gods
to hang on their wall.
We can’t help but dream
of what we can’t control.

The trial is almost over, the attorneys have argued
philosophy instead of law, each holding to ideals
we can never quite attain in this life. A jury

would be worthless. You have no money to pay
mileage or per diem anyway. You have listened
to all of the extenuating circumstances

and must measure the clarity attained since
the beginning, whether tortoise or hare,
neither speed nor time are factors anymore.

Did the distance come easy, did you not feel
Dante’s sins set-up camp beneath your skin,
were you immune and not succumb to learning

the hard way—not learn a thing? Out here
there are few secrets left, no place to hide—no
commotion or combustion cloud to float within.

Of chance, of luck, of all the signs,
we teeter near disaster despite the odds—
and we enhance them chasing passion
like butterflies, like all good humans.

Always the ambush, I have lain in wait
for quail, for the illusive young buck,
for greenheads circling beneath gray fog
and forgot to fire or decided not

to disturb such grace, to pick and pluck.
What is it then we hunger for
more than living, or giving life
another chance to sweep us up?

                                              for Amanda

Humbled by time upon this ground
beneath these skies—these stars aligned
with eternity and the moon’s rise,

by whatever sets events of chance
in motion, that chain reaction
lucky stumblebums know is beyond

their doing or direction—we have been
chosen to survive, to learn our lessons
before we decompose and start over again

as something less complex, yearning only
for the sun and rain. A man can
start early, revel in the weather, dance

among goddesses and hobgoblins alike,
knowing nothing will stay the same
beneath this ball of firelight.

They propose life on other planets,
in other galaxies, that learn in the same
way—some confined to immortal lives.

We’ve seen these years, here:
frosty, slow dances on the horizon
as cows grow thinner. She shows
a little leg and throws a lusty look
long distance, then comes close
to exposing a great billow of clouds
as she bends to whisper something
that rhymes with rain.

We are too old for this charade
of goddesses-in-training, neophytes
stretching like willow limbs
upon the ridgeline, like rock
wrens bumping the earth
to flit away. We need
the real thing: a prolonged
storm to run the canyons.

They’ve had their practice,
entertained the cowboys slumped
at their tables, long-drunk
with anticipation. Rumor is she’s
resting in her dressing room,
has a migraine and may not make
the show tonight. At this late date,
all we know to do is wait.

There is a place in the calendar
when a season rides on a whim—
it could be a white, winged-Pegasus
on the muscle without a bridle,

or a tiny low off the coast
drawing moisture into
a growing vortex spinning sheets
of rain to start the canyons,

to keep the grass alive—when the future
teeters for a week or so about the time
the Turkey Vultures show in pairs.
Two or three more and spring is over

before it began and the cows
bring their calves down early
off the mountains for adoption,
when we all look to the sky

for a sign. The ground squirrels
quit playing grab-ass for a moment
to study the near horizon, listen
as rattlesnakes wait on the edge

of their dens for the weather
to make up its mind, as if it had one.
But we’re not riding blind—
any kind of pagan sign will do.

We might as well be rare birds
occupied off the road, a dwindling species
keeping to itself as the world speeds by.

Behind the wheel, that great invention,
it has all it needs now to save time
on the other end of its destination.

Pickup loads of toys stream upcanyon,
primal music thumping all the way
to places we don’t want to go after

watching the troops retreat at dusk,
limping home. It must be like a war
up there in the mud and snow.

We work around the fire, a fine discovery,
pulling irons and calves together,
stirring coals, retelling stories after

while the meat cooks, before we forget
our place in these mountains that
have shaped characters and rare birds.

It’s dark and I think of all the branding fires
in barrels, 55 gallon drums yawning smoke
outside corrals, handles waiting, reaching in—

and the one I’ll start with an old Western
Livestock Journal and redwood kindling split
with an axe, a little diesel added to short chunks

of dry Live Oak, belching flames. How we get
to white coals doesn’t matter to anyone but me.
The calves sleep quietly with their mothers,

like any other dark morning, unaware
of what’s coming, dodging long loops
and whoops of men before the iron

and vaccinations, tag, ear mark and castration,
nasal swabs of DNA on cards and nubs of horns
removed in less than two minutes of their lives—

like going to the doctor. When it’s over
they’ll tell their mothers while being licked.
But by tomorrow they’ll forget it ever happened.