Don Bouchard

Don Bouchard Feb 2022

Scripture seems to be clear about the permanence
Of hell's torment, yet we finite human beings insist upon
Superimposing our imaginative emendations
Upon Scriptural descriptions.

Why do we do this?
Perhaps our love for those we suspect
Have gone to eternal damnation,
Or the fear that we ourselves may not
Make it to eternal bliss
Motivates us to create
Heavens and Hells,
Multiverses.

I believe that I am finite,
That I am created,
That my planning and conniving are incapable
Of changing the Eternal plans.
I have no power to create alternate realities;
No temporal holds upon supernal.

Thinking

Don Bouchard Feb 2022

Chimney Rock 1966

Burns Creek
Climbing Chimney Rock.
Dad and David Scoville
In their mid 30s,
Two men out to prove
Their bravery,
Their derring-do.

Nervous,
My Mother,
My brother and I,
Five and six,
Necks craning,
Wait and watch;
Dad moves up and up
Clings to the top.

Inept and six,
I stand below,
Admiring my Father's
Fearlessness.

I am nearly blind,
The myopic, thick-lensed gawker,
Peering upward.

The men climb down,
Victorious,
The day’s challenges
Vanquished.

Heading home,
Choking dust.
Old land,
Deep ravines,
Rattle snake domain.

My father's old Ford
Bumps over red scoria,
Billows burning dust.

Ancient land,
Cindered clay,
Open grazing land,
Dry and hot.

Memories churn
From sixty years ago.

#growing #memories #manhood #challenges #masculinity

Don Bouchard Jan 2022

Lignite

Eastern Montana Badlands
1930s....

Coal where one found it,
Scoria hills,
Layered lignite
Waiting near the surface.

Burning lignite beds,
Smoldering centuries old,
Scarring and turning clay to scoria,
Crumbling rock,
Testimony to lightning fires
Beneath the hills.

Crude mines backed into cliffs,
Pick and shoveled coal
Free for the risky taking
Heated homes.

Coal caves,
Low and gaping,
Horizontal shafts.
Wagons first, then
Trucks backed in.

Crowbars and picks
Brought lignite ceilings
Crashing in rotten shatters
Mounding, sometimes burying
Trucks below.

My father told me
How he helped
Chris Ginther,
Deaf coal miner,
Hammer holes,
Insert charges,
Long fuses, trailing.

Old Chris packing holes,
Tamping,
Tamping,
Tamping...
Lighting fuses,
Tamping,
Tamping,
Tamping.

My father said he'd yell
"We need to go!"

Old Chris
Seemed never to hear,
Tamping,
Tamping,
Tamping,
Until finally...
Sauntering out
Before the rumbling Thump.

I can see the two,
Chris and my father,
Just a boy,
Lost in lignite clouds,
Coughing.

Funny how even 10 years gone, I can hear my father's voice.... He told us this story many times while we were growing up.

#danger #coal #mining #lignite

Don Bouchard Jan 2022

Dear Al Gore & Uncle Joe

Nature rang.
She wants to know
What are your plans
For volcanoes.

Nature, pollution, earth-belches

Don Bouchard Dec 2021

The Year Past

The imminence of death
Heightens awareness of eternity.
We realize our need to live in the reality
That as eternal beings we must prepare to die wisely
As well as to live.

During the Christmas season,
We return to the Truth:
Jesus is our hope,
Our source of joy,
Our source of peace
Even in the face of loss,
Even in our sorrow.

Jesus is our “Shelter in the Time of Storm.”

Great loss and sorrow upon us in the past year. Fifteen souls gone, including my mother, two aunts, a cousin, and more....

Don Bouchard Dec 2021

Still Births

The rough draft
Stillborn lies:
Five paragraphs
Fully formed,
Topic
Safely stated,
Three points,
Strung in line
Tense & form
Aligned monotony.

No life here,
Words penned,
Five paragraphs
Double spaced,
Properly indented,
Grammar neatly safe.
Enough, and without risk.
Nothing here to see.

No life here
Nothing here to see

I am twenty-one again,
Standing in a chill March barn,
Steam and blood scent,
Obstetric chains straining
On the winch I crank
To save a calf born breech,
Rear heel pads pointing up.

The strain and pull exhaust me,
Mother staggering in the stanchion,
I wrestle against time, about to break.

The calf’s hips stall against the cable strain
Then slip as something pops...
Whether baby or mother
I am uncertain.

Whooshing, the calf slides out and down,
Cable and chain,
Blood and fluid,
Umbilical stretching,
Last tethering connection.
The newborn lies un-shivering,
Inert upon wet straw.

I slip off the chains,
Grasp the slippery feet above
Jellied hooves,
Hoist the calf,
Hang it head down,
Slap it against the wall,
Chant, “Breathe!”
Breathe!
Breathe!
Breathe!

Desperate miracle!
The lungs gurgle,
Raspy coughing,
Gargling mucous,
Air brings life.

The mother,
Eyes rolling,
Murmurs.

Forty years later I stare:
Stillborn paper
Delivered late and lifeless,
Having form,
Technically correct,
Lying breathless on my desk.

Were I to slap it against a wall,
The lines would still be dead.
So, what to do about resuscitation?
I cannot slap the paper,
Nor the student.
My dry eyes tire
Following inanity.

DB Dec. 8, 2021

The lines blur between two forms of struggle. Resuscitation is only possible if the basic spark of life resides.

#cattle #writing #life #death

Don Bouchard Dec 2021

2021, I am

On a desert plain, wind blown, mirages boiling,
Dusted, parched beneath an angry sun,
Silent heat unending, withering, bending...
So many loves behind me now have fallen.

Walking first, I tried to run;
Standing now, my trudging's done,
At battle's end; the desert's won,
On the plain of despair, I am undone.

I wait for the chilling night to fall
I wait for the chill of night to fall
Night to fall....

Far off, the mountains stand,
Slopes of trees lined in black,
Beneath celestial snowy caps.

There's water flowing there, I know,
Beneath those icy tips of snow.

Were I to lie here on this ground
I might not wake,
And though rest's a tempting sound
I will not take my end in lying down.

The ones who left me far behind
Have flown to rest ahead,
And if I linger here to pine,
My heart knows this is not my bed.

These winds, this heat, the churning air,
Are only for this place; solace awaits up there
On the mountains' rising *****,
I inhale the wind and muster my last hope.

2021, a year of loss...