Category Archives: Poems 2013

This is the life
we’ve chosen—free
to work what we want
or go bellyup beside the asphalt.

We believe in clouds,
the darker the better—
pray to the sky
and acknowledge every sign

that might mean something.
We grin like fools that know
it’s going to rain, someday
in Two-thirteen, or the next,

while we feed hay, our day job
where names don’t matter.
Each moment hangs on
the breath of cattle, steaming.

                                                  for Robbin

When the lights dim
a man holds to solid things.
Even Sisyphus wants his rock
and well-worn hill, the lumps
and bumps to lean against—
pockets of rest rather than
succumb to the quick and easy
new monotony where nothing
ever stays the same.

At the hardware store, I wait
for bent old men to finish
passing medical procedures
over the counter like medals
won in war, lean on canes.
This is where the retired come,
or to the doughnut shop
for gossip, coffee and calories.
I want my rocks and trees.

We know something’s coming,
the forecast changes every morning—
self-assured weathermen unabashed.

Cows don’t care for holidays,
have no plans—listen for the diesel
mantra to fill their bellies.

Half the hay barn is unemployed
and shed no rain. We meet at the gate
at dawn, glad to see one another

doing well in our small world
of dust trails. We know something’s
coming because it always does.

The roads are treacherous and steep
up or downhill with a load of sweet
alfalfa—gear box low range—crawling
in and out ruts from when it rained
hard one year I can’t remember
in this dust, the flatbed creaks
and moans, strains against gravity
pulling from rocky bottoms. Up here,
the cows are always glad to see you
bring hay, to show-off calves
and wait politely, except the old girls,
the familiar and reliable you trust
to take care of you as they press,
flesh to flesh, against the truck.

It takes all day to feed a hundred cows
in the hills, all week to feed them all.
Plodding days with neither names
nor numbers in a dusty blur of months,
the dark square holes grow larger
beneath the barn roof. A man leans
against the empty black, quits
listening to grinning, fair-weathermen
and turns his back on the world
as he lifts another bale. All the politics
and posturing of the planet can’t
clear his lungs from a hazy daze
of alfalfa dust, can’t draw the mind
of man or beast away until it rains.

No perfect document,
no parchment without pinholes
to fill with fresh details:

how skunks call-out honeybees at night
by scratching at the door, decimate hives,
keep tongues unstung. Another wonder

that may be otherwise worthless
information to the human herd
headed-off into Magicland

all expenses paid, one-way
or another. I am content to wave
‘Goodbye’ as they head West,

following sundowns, mesmerized
like bees in-line
out into the dark bellies of skunks.

                                                 for Gabe and Frank

Off to the north, on the mossy, shady side
of the planet, storms brew—churn with wet
energy stirred by gods yearning for the flesh,

or so I imagine in the wider ranges
of possibility, offering what science cannot
seem to find: practical solace for an open mind.

Ruled by the light, they have no clocks to punch,
no place especially to be except in the pulsing
heart of life, in the action they cannot feel

without flesh. We stay on their good side,
think positively as they dash from tree
to leafless tree, work and wait for a cloudy day.