drycrikjournal

Chance and fate, we fly through time
on pinball ricochets and peg collisions
with bells and whistles, defying gravity

until our turn is done. Few measure each
extended breath or look to granite peaks
with awe, but early-on someone calls –

a distant whisper or the wild songs
that resonate beyond our knowing –
and they choose, drawn like water

to its groove, the gravity of grounded
things that grow, that root, that leaf
that fruit, that bear and live to bear

again like grass with rain. Your hands
may not show calloused content, nor
eyes absorb a lifelong harvest, but

they are scattered here and there
like grazing cattle, simple people
who feed themselves – who feed us all.

Fat with poetry, forsaken
exercise for words I like
too much for my knees
to bear, anymore –

slowed down to take
another closer look
to see what I missed
with more agility,

this world is full of bugs,
it seems, beyond asphalt,
concrete, and the clean streets
empty in our dreams, but

bugs are busy feeding
themselves and many others,
small details very near
the beginning of things.

Light comes round, shapes hills with shadow,
gilds the faces of tilted peaks, pyramids upcanyon
where gods must live to stay clear of the clatter –

ridge after ridge afire upon the green this side of sky
like a loose deck at dawn, glimpses of kings, queens
and knaves in the deal. O’ how my father cringed

with my selected verse, one-sided, loose leaves
bound under a clear plastic cover in limited editions
published by Xerox in the 60s – that first trip

and stumble into small press, Everyman’s magic
for a dime-a-copy. I liked the look, but his reviews,
couched and pillowed between long breaths,

did not detour nor inspire me, though troubled him
as perhaps it should have in those days of Republicans
and young men in a long jungle war. Say good-bye

to the Draft, once the sword, become the disambiguation
of governments, we have evolved to mercenaries
and drones, there are no kids to mow our lawns –

clean-cut, grown-ups now, running for offices.
He would be happy with my pastoral imagery,
lift an eye, grin a little at the pantheistic,

yet remembering when he drug me out of bed,
by the toe, to show me the Kaweah steaming
among cottonwoods, a colored mist rising.

                                                                for David Wilke

I say their names before squeezing the trigger,
focus and shoot – looking for someone I don’t know,
never noticed showing lost among the grass stems,

weeds. The old horse has slowed, given-up
that blurred, brush-busting high-lope in the spring,
to note their coming: early or late, dirt they like,

who are their friends and enemies. Someday, they
will tell more, show sign – centuries of blooming
hues, leaving seed – each has something to say.