Category Archives: Poems 2013

We are absurd casualties of politics,
finding our cartoons more interesting
than real life, actually believing
in causes with mascots, symbols
that trigger plastic magic, pay pal.

We would paint the planet with it
if we could, smother the surface
with capitalism gone wrong
if the whole herd got along
and wanted in the same direction.

We cheer for the underdog
and hope that the outlaw’s escape
from town will be enough to hold him
apart. But there’s no getaway
nowadays, no way to be an island.

Not black and white cowboy songs
from New York City, I preferred
Cousin Herb’s Tradin’ Post

live from Bakersfield: steel guitar
and the nasal whine of harmonizing
men at work in dusty fields

between Saturday night fights
over a girl everyone knew
in every Valley town with a bar—

almost every intersection had one.
Cultivated in between, fertile
dirt for boys wanting to become

something other than a butcher
or baker, something bigger
and better than a job in town.

Still searching dreams,
I keep running into myself
on this same old ground.

A jagged black and blue horizon
divides my mind at dawn—between
the ethereal above and the solid
ground we’re planted on—each

day the line impressed unless
blessed with dark storm clouds
eclipsing the difference, clinging
to peaks and leaking torrents

I vaguely remember as cleansing
all states of being. The hills rise
to a broken edge on this divide
branded in my mind for life.

They awake from dusty bed dreams
hungry and hope this is a feed day,
bawl for green alfalfa flaked across
brown powdered flats to assuage the dry
ache, some with calves at their sides.

But for the moment, they look O.K.
It’s every third day, not every other
where they stand and wait and the weak
are never full—everyday I multiply
and divide in my head: more bales

into pounds per animal averaged per day
to ignore them watching me load the truck
for somewhere else—don’t look too close,
don’t meet their eye. We gnaw square holes
in a stack under roof and roll the dice

betting on some early storms to change
lives, turn bare dirt into an emerald green
blanket grazed by black cows and calves—
that miracle we believe in every year,
that magic that makes all the difference.

I walked miles with myself
and a rifle shooting squirrels,
skinning rattlesnakes and listening
to sprawling oak trees speak,
often as a boy. Hawks and buzzards
eyed me suspiciously, gave me
space and a name that cut both ways
and waited while I made up my mind.

In those days, propaganda
was a dirty word—nowadays
it’s all we ever know.
With good advertising
employing every sense of being
someone, we sell planned obsolescence
like hotcakes—each bite
paid for with a little bit of soul.

                                             for David Wilke

Cool dark breeze
through the screen door,
mud grips whine upcanyon,
men’s faces lit by flames
exaggerate bucks in rut
before the hunt—like
headlights on narrow curves
slow to follow, scanning space
all the way up the mountain
where Cutlers ran cattle
for almost a century.

I have hungered
for venison, felt the tough
wild rush through my flesh
on the scent of it
cooked over fire—believe
to have absorbed his eye,
his stealth and stamina
as I inhale his grace—
just as I have hungered
for the company of certain men
and drink, for the camaraderie
of calloused hands and hearts
wide open to the stars.

An interrupted dream, of course,
without the constraint of time—
the near and distant, live and dead

working as one generation bent
to a joyous harvest fresh
with obstacles to overcome

on a common landscape. The old
barn that burned is still standing,
still harboring Black Widows

we work around, laughing about
all we know now—our syndicate,
our union of attitude tangled

with busy arms and legs
into an efficient dance
on the same ground. As it tries

to escape, I hold a pastel
rural scene without the feeling
of machinery or electric lights

like an open door to reenter,
someday, to be among the voices
of those before and yet to come.

It should be easy to grow
old, day after day, buffeted
by the seasons like a barn

standing—like the tree it was—
with character, weathered veins
of roughcut 1 x 12s showing

in certain light. The storms
have names we have forgotten
now, but we are not afraid

of what we have survived,
not even the sounds of strain
that creak in our timbers.

We spend years preparing
for a simple life without
knowing it, stripping away

the weight of our ornaments
and obsessive diversions
to put a shoulder into the wind.

And braced with a stiff drink,
we grin again into the face
of the next storm coming.

The sun hangs behind the ridge
to glow for a moment at the equinox,
take time to visit Nevada before climbing

the Sierras into our blinding daybreak. After
longer nights, the clay and granite slopes
of this canyon oven, cool now at dawn

prolonged—the urgency of work gone
as we plod once more with certain hope
beyond the months of blistering dry heat.

We suffer summer for the other seasons
when it might storm, damp air teeming
with fresh potential inhaled into our flesh—

we come alive, breathe relief. The gods
take their sweet time to find their places
in the light—tease us, please us now.