Category Archives: Poems 2013

Never born knowing how to run
like fuzzy killdeer and quail,
nor how to crawl like frogs,
or swim like tadpoles and fish,

we heard from the old men
and learned the hard way that
if you want something done right,
do it yourself. But what could we know

then? Now we are the old men
with more jobs than we can do easily,
or well. While we pull 220 feet
of submersible pump hand over hand,

a distant neighbor asks,
‘Don’t you have a Mexican?’
At 74, you grin back,
‘We are the Mexicans!’

                                                for Clarence

We have given up our silent space
and sold it for security, for the sounds
of machinery and ever-ready contact—

the oil shale rigs and cellphones
are closing in, there is no distance left
where we might walk alone

and talk to ourselves, no quiet time
where we might hear the echoes
of our fathers and those before them.

Who are we now afraid to be alone?
afraid of loneliness and that process?
Who will we become but children

in cages waiting for the piper
to lead us out of Egypt
unable to think on our own?

Checking in on my daughter’s blog forthe archives, I’ve begun to weigh-in with questions close to home, concerns for a long time that triggered this poem.

As if we never left,
the cows remember us
as we gather to brand
to the pasture they

first calved. At dusk,
the whole bunch comes
to stand at the fence
to listen to us plan

the week, food and crew
and who can come to help—
as if they’d never left.
Feeling close and safe,

they’ll spend the night
on this fresh feed
and dream as if
we belong to each other.

2/13: Adding to the electrical problems in the kitchen, flat tire on the Kubota, helping Clarence pull 220 feet of 1″ tubing with 1 hp submersible pump to replace with solar yesterday, our dear heifers broke a water line to the house.

You will never hear the late-night
conversations in motel rooms,
or guitars picked and strummed
without the stage lights

                    and never learn to listen
                    before asking questions
                    for the folks in town—

on assignment in the cold and snow
to get some news in God knows where
to sandwich between silly ads
and the latest mass murder.

                    The camera hums—
                    and all you want to hear
                    are poems about guns.

                                                                                for Al Jazeera

Dear Gary, Thought I’d share the news
your muse set free on Bubbs Creek
damn-near fifty years ago proclaiming
space with words the common man
in all of us can hold in our hands
and use for the real work, if we want
to learn to live together, understand
that we grow smaller upon the mountain.

Two bronze cowboys look-off on a loose rein
from your shelf—sweet accolades
that sustain a solitary art that we can never claim
as solely ours. What great joy it’s been!
How rich the life! And should the stars
align just right, we have a place for you
at our table, at that grand Oklahoma City
shindig this coming April. —John

And ever-thankful to the old man on the coast:

                    If God has been good enough to give you a poet
                    Then listen to him. But for God’s sake let him alone until he is dead;
                    no prizes, no ceremony,
                    They kill the man.
                               – Robinson Jeffers (“Let Them Alone”)

Somewhere, someone grins
since we’ve been rejuvenated
reading poetry in the cold, tipping
hats to hold one another one more time,
to raise a glass to something other
than the obvious, sing the old songs—

and planted ‘No Parking’ signs
lit like torches for over a mile
in our headlights, like an urban
‘welcome home’ at the beginning
of Dry Creek Road they changed
to Drive years ago, declared Scenic
for the tourists, and as a token
for the enviros.

                Safe inside somewhere else,
someone is blinded with this brilliant
satisfaction, this line of reflective lights,
this declaration that begs reprisal,
that dares the riff-raff with a six-pack
and nothing else to do but prove
they are alive, sensitive to any
officious sign of what they can’t do.

It all plays out down the road
without me, without a letter
for the record no one gives a damn
about—or can afford to enforce.
It could be shown in film
festivals around the world—
this microcosmic vignette that
celebrates what we already know.

                        to the particular pitter patter pattern
                        on the tin roof, that has never been
                        and will never be again. Amen.
                            – Neil Meili (“Rain In January”)

Some days, it does rain
after the work is done,
when unsaddled horses
let the sweat run, before rolling—

when the dog stays close
to appreciate whatever it is
that holds your attention—
proud to know you.

We tip our cup
to random days, listening
to an ever-changing rhythm,
dry beneath a tin roof

as yesterday washes
down the draw—and
in the gray distance,
tomorrow waits its turn.

Amen.

“Of course I’d like to come,” I answered,
When I got the foreman’s call.
I like to help the neighbors when I can.
My irrigation water wouldn’t
Miss me much at all,
And there’s not a better thing to do than brand.

Bright and early the next morning,
I went quickly out the door,
When the little stars were starting to go out
And I rattled ‘cross the cattle guard
Contented to the core,
‘Cuz brandings are what this life’s all about.

Though I didn’t know this outfit,
I’d know most the fellers there.
The ranching world is really kind of small.
Then I had no way of knowing
When the ropers were all paired,
I’d be roping with the master of them all.

He was clearly pushing eighty
When we all shook hands around.
Never met before but I sure knew his name.
And before the day was over
I was certain that I’d found
Several pieces of this puzzling living game.

Swinging overhand reata,
Reg’lar as a metronome,
On a black colt poised and ready every beat,
He would sail it towards the target
And it always found a home
On an unsuspecting calf’s head or two feet.

Not an ounce of wasted energy,
The big black colt moved out
In a confident, slow way that I admired.
Never hurried, never hustled,
We just turned each horse about
And another calf was stretched right by the fire.

When we broke for lunch I noted
On his colt tied by the fence
With the faded saddle fenders in the sun,
That he’d won it as a trophy
In a bridle horse event.
It said, “Santa Barbara, 1941.”

I admired it for its beauty
Nearly hidden by its age.
It was finely crafted, rigging to the horn.
Every scar on it was history.
I could read it page by page,
And he won it seven years ‘fore I was born.

As the branding was concluded,
One young roper that I’d met,
Who’d been running his poor pony from the start,
Gave his horse one final jerking,
Covered up with foam as sweat,
Up and asked me, “Where’d you dig up this old fart?”

Every nerve I have said, “Hit him!”
But instead I let it pass.
His arena broke ideas are common stuff.
His mind was wrapped with inner tube.
Equating ‘good’ with ‘fast’.
I think ignorance is punishment enough.

                        reprinted from Dry Crik Review, Spring 1993

After a good rain high, a hazy heaven claims
the foothills, bare oaks reach out of the gray
like skeletons of hobgoblins when all the wild

cats and dogs, the greater and lesser gods,
come close to our fires. It’s like a holiday—
their day-off to play any games they want,

anywhere beyond our eyes. Sometimes
they stray and fall out of the fog, or you
hear fuzzy pieces of their gleeful gatherings,

and it is comforting to know they thrive
like cattle in these many shades of gray.
How often have I felt a presence where

this canyon narrows, beyond your house
and hospitality in all seasons? By the fire
outside, you tell me how you and Baby came

in your leathers on your Harleys from the coast
twenty years ago and parked. You point
to a stand of young naked oak trees rooted

across the road, peeking from the moving
edge of heaven that is now hovering,
hanging ready to engulf us. I imagine

afternoon passion as you say, ‘over there
is the ground we wanted so to build
a home, but this is close enough.’

                         we ordinary beings can cling to the earth and love
                         where we are, sturdy for common things.
                                        – William Stafford (“Allegiances”)

Nothing fancy holds cattle to the hillside
to make their clans and homes as they graze
without holidays, as seasons change

their habits, often plodding through time
on the same uneven ground as their mothers—
the earth they know. There are times

to envy such simplicity, let ill winds blow
the unnecessary free from we ordinary beings—
times to take stock in who we truly are

before proclamations seize our souls,
freeze our feeling for comfort into fear
to haunt our most pastoral dreams.