Blackbirds have found the feeder;
Lookouts scan from upper branches
While takers pillage cracked corn.

I approach to a flurry of black flight;
Guilt needlessly hangs
With the red feeder.

Meals offered to all comers...
Excepting squirrels
For which a weighted door
Flips down to cover the pans.

Four-footed chatterers declare war,
Express intention to circumvent
Discrimination.

Women, like the moon, reflect the light/love
Shone upon them, and when the light grows dim,
They take to dark pursuits
Hoping to find happiness and love.
Essential elements missing: love and acceptance.
Consequences: pain and death.

Advice from one husband of forty years to a soon-to-be husband:
Tell your wife on day one how beautiful she is, and
Keep telling her until the day you die.
She needs to know that you find her to be your all in all,
That you will love her beauty now,
When she brings children into the world,
And in the life after children,
When she has made sacrifices that will change her body
In ways that may cause her despair.

Tell her when she's 30 and 40 and 50 and 60 and 70 and 80
That she is beautiful, and something amazing happens.
You will see her with the eyes that saw her on the first day;
Your love, and her love will grow young again,
Even as the two grow old.

"Till death do us part" is a vow of strength,
Of promise, of comfort as years grow on.
The satisfaction and privilege of loving one person all through life
Cannot be compared with any other love or joy humans can know.

Take this advice or leave it.
It cost nothing, though it is worth everything.

weather breaking
                                        on the heartland
begins in other places
                                        minute-changing phases
threads and traces
                                       give the air its faces
gestational solitude
                                        hovers and broods
streams of space,
                                       solidifying in pace
before the thunder
                                      before the hail
storms begin as
                               whispers
                                                   breezes
first a zephyr
                            then a wind
                                                        beco­mes a gale
a force of power
                                         from breath to HURRICANE
indiscernible at first -              
                                          at last unstoppable

Just done with the calm of ice,
Lake waters, frigid,
Wind-lashed,
Writhe in fury,
White manes frothing.

Crouching on the shoreline,
I catch angled crashes,
Waves smashing rock,
******* shore lines,
Immortalize water's pulling shift
Wood and shells and moss,
Rearing high and slammed
Against the boundaries.

Ageless elements waging war:
Wind, water, and land,
Disrupting, tangling peace,
Superciliously ignoring
My transient observation
Of the winds of spring.

If it
Started with an apple;
Will it
End with a syringe?

Ten thousand years to grapple
Sin-tactics on a binge

We will be the willows,
Resolving to live,
Bending with the storms,
Not the cottonwoods
Refusing change,
Standing rigid,
Breaking in the gales.

My brother is a pilot,
Not just any old pilot...
A tail dragger pilot,
Champions
Cubs,
Super Cubs.

Planes made of spars and fabric,
Held tight
By screws
And dope,
And glue.

Airframes part wood,
Part aluminum,
Part steel.

Fuel tanks sloshing in the wings
Either side above our heads,

Set the mags,
Hand crank the prop,
Turn on the fuel,
Hear her pop
And roar to life.

We strap in
Single file,
Controls fore
And aft.
And rev 'er up
To join the winds.

Once up,
He yells, "She's yours!"
And I am piloting,
Or rather gingerly sliding her
About the blue,
Skidding right or left,
Holding my breath,
Wondering how much I dare
To tip her up there in the air.

"I've got the stick!"
He yells, and I let go.
"Don't be afraid to fly it!"
"It's just a machine!"
"Make it do what you want it to do!"

And we are diving toward the ground,
Then bringing her up and tilting 'round.

"Give her fuel when you tilt to turn!"
He demonstrates, and we are standing
On the wing,
Perpendicular and looking to our left and down.


I know he's right,
That I am timid in my flight,
And he is brave with years of joy,
A pilot fearless since he was a boy.

"You want to land?"
I hear him say.

"No, that's alright!"
"Not today!"

To prove how safe it is to fly,
He touches down,
Then bounces high,
And vaults us back into the sky.

We flit across the fields,
And then,
He flies beneath the power lines,
To show how spray planes catch the ends
Of fields.

He skies the plane at either end,
Then bee lines it to the badlands' edge
Where suddenly we are swooping down
Between the canyon walls, and sinking low,
Then, rising, turning to our right,
He sails us toward sun's dying light.
My only hope is that we will land
Before the night
Erases all our sight.

And sure enough,
The air is calm.
The night is coming on.
Gusting breezes are all gone.

We gently settle once again,
Back at the ranch,
And I help wheel her, then
Into her waiting hangar pen.

Life can be lived all in a panic.
Fear fills us with a lingering dread,
But we should live our lives.

Just like my brother said.
"It's just your life, so make it do
Whatever it is you want it to!