Tag Archives: poetry

Always looking down
on the road, on the creek,
all my life measuring

the downstream flow
of morning traffic—counting
cattle, birds and coyotes—

it draws the eye to vast
diversities of purpose
beyond the moment,

twigs and branches
etched into the sky
begging a longer look.

When I was young and lived alone
she kept me company, silhouette
stretched along the ridge waiting

for the moon upon her breast,
long hair falling into the creek.
Some nights she stirred in her sleep.

Alive, these hills still welcome me,
draw flesh and eyes away
from the bottomlands of man.

So many places near at hand where lovers slipped
into the afternoon shade, dark upon the green,
lichened rocks burning beside small oak trees

beckoning, begging a pause for conversation.
The grandfather oak, arms wider than he was tall,
a Red Tail’s roost, swooped to clutch a wounded

squirrel when I was a boy, both talked to me—
we made a deal. Leaking from the gossip rocks
worn smooth by women’s feet, a chattering

melody claims the air, of centuries layered
and bared, freckled granite gray to the sky.
Always horseback in these steep hills,

the old cowboys before me were drunk
with what spoke to them, would rather ride
the unpredictable wild and tell the tale

than slap backs among the civilized. This
was their place in time—all the sharp eyes
I remember and recognize by the cut

of their descriptions, all the stories saved
by their fathers’ fathers, secreted away
and still waiting to be told, near at hand.

The old Fox theater, stars
blinking high above the balcony,
Tarzan swinging from a grapevine

for a dime when we were small—
but now, I want to slow the movie down
to a crawl, freeze the frame and rest,

digest the shit-rain of hearsay,
let the cloudy water settle to see
that my rippling reflection is more real

than what the screen is offering.
We are old children watching
an older script unfold, a motley cast

of bad actors vying for the lead.
But there is no holding the planet in place
just to wait for me.