I wrote poems once
About blackberry picking with my children.
They were lovely.
The children, too,
When they were sleeping.
I thought about those poems
When I was stomping teasel and milkweed
In the field behind the barn
With my big green muck boots
So that I could get to ripe berries.
Alone.
Hawk dueting
With the two little goats.
You have to wonder why
In such a moment
That you would work and sweat
For two measly quarts of free berries.
When I was younger
It was not unusual
To get proposals of marriage
For cobblers and cakes and dumplings
From old men who were already married.
Two quarts down.
Several to go.

anonymous winds
bend tall Timothy grasses,
wake rabbits napping
in the brush

they ripple the surface
of the stock tanks, tickle the haunches
of the beasts who wade there
to slurp the tepid waters

they birth red dust devils
for my eyes to follow, as they scud
through mesquite, and hopscotch over canyons
older than time

one day, soon, they will blow
over a shallow earth bed; I will not hear
their sibilant song, but my sleep will be deep,
unperturbed by their mystic music

a thousand miles we traveled to see
your jack-hammered giants--we arrived at dusk
just as the torrents began, bathing your
chiseled countenances

we hid in our chariot of modernity
wipers flapping in syncopated time, Bluetooth belching
out words from kin, "have a good time,"
"sorry for the storm..."  

but I wasn't, for lightning struck
a blackjack pine, and four mammoth men
came to life, their sheen now electric, their long
mute voices once again a resounding roar

She was 87 years old.
Has trouble with arthritis.
Daughter said
Can you smell that cream?

She told me her mother
Was full-blooded
Cherokee
And I told her
I could see it in her face.

She said I had cherokee blood
She said she could
See it in my face

She said someone
Brought her a seven-sided statue
She said she didn't know if she believed
His story.

He said an old chief
Came out of a tree
And gave it to him.
He said the old chief
Said it was meant for her.

He said he would
Take her to that tree
To see if the old chief
Would come out
To meet her

I told her
I believed

the same, again, again

I am in the bunker
the wire is crawling with them
like so many black clad snakes
spewing venom at my brothers and at me
and I am out of ammo, my M16 magazines
empty, caked with mud

everyone is looking to me
for salvation, for a salvo of rounds
at the VC, and I find a twenty two
Ruger pistol, the same one I used
to **** a buzzard for sport, one
sinful desert day; and now I aim
at the enemy, firing over
and over, hitting them
dead center, but they
keep coming

I never run out of rounds
but the impotence of my fire
burns inside me--I reach for my empty M16,
but it's still empty--they keep coming

even when I wake, even when
the morning sun has blotted out
the black dream

they keep coming
I keep reaching, reaching
for the empty gun

i assumed she is your mother, i watched you

both so kind to each other.



apparently.



i could not walk yesterday, was working.

the drive home that feeling came again,

after all those years.



the news was devastating. please be kind

to another.



sunday.



sbm.