Category Archives: Poems 2019

The air is clear, clean—ridgelines
sharp with thunderstorms elsewhere,
too late to prolong the dream
of an everlasting spring.

The mottled transition of grasses
against crisp shadows holds,
drawing from ample winter rains
to become a painting, a pinto—

a young, firm-muscled overo
with good withers, soft mouth
and big heart, so seductive
as to lose myself to ride

these slopes for the first time—
like your eyes this evening,
hands reaching to touch softly
without the weight of words.

As the early-morning Pink Moon
wanes in the blue
west of sunrise after Easter

soothes my Monday mind
with the habits of horses
waiting at their mangers—

alfalfa stems in windrows
at their feet, rolled and picked
clean of leaf before the sweeter

beckoning of short-cropped green
going to seed, I pause
to inhale their earthy smell.

New leaves, new shade
as flowers fade to seed
               the future

                              shiny-hided heifers
                              with babies in their bellies
                              claim the oak trees,
                              gossip and commiserate
                              about the unknown

               after sex
with bulls, bugs and bees.

Wild colors fade, the grass turns
in the sand and shallow ground
on south slopes as Killdeer defend

their gravel nests and Blackbirds
scout the sky like fighter pilots
patrolling air space—an urgency

to plant seed and protect babies
before spring’s dreaded deadline—
before it gets too late to rain.