When ranchers decide to do a thing,
Sometimes they just go through it.
What follows is a little fling
A neighbor did...don't do it.

The clearing of the land requires a little fortitude
Some ingenuity, and luck, and not a little courage.
So A.D. Volbrecht's story, though a little crude,
Is only strange to those who eat milk toast and porridge.

Rather than tear an old house down to clear a farming space,
A.D. enlisted help from his oldest son to haul the thing away.
Together then, the two grown men took on a moving race
To see if they could jack the house and move it in one day.

The morning saw a Donahue, low slung and meant to haul,
Waiting as the house was raised, (unsteady on new legs)
Then slowly lowered down again. T'would make a feller bawl
To see the old home place prepare to pack its bags.

Son Zane began a steady pull to move the old house home,
And A.D. took his place in front, flashers and flags to warn.
Slow going was their pace, and traffic stopped up some;
The actual move was tougher than the plan they'd formed.

So seven miles became a half a day, and challenges arose
How ever would they move the thing through town?
The power lines and traffic cops were obstacles; who knows
What kinds of tickets they'd be writing down?

Up ahead the airport gleamed, the tarmac shimmered black.
"Aha!" old A.D. cried, "I've found the way around!"
Hard left he turned on a county road, and cut the fence in back
And guided Zane and the old home shack to airport ground.

Western Airways flight was due sometime that afternoon;
Old AD rattled on up Runway One, old pickup running fast,
To find a gate to let the old house through, (and none too soon);
The tractor and its load sputtered through the parking lot at last.

In June a few years back, a farmer and his son pulled off a heist.
Stole some runway time and cut their journey short...
No harm done, though they'd never do it twice
Without winding up defenseless in the county court.

Thrift Shop Confessional

Old carts squeak down re-sale aisles
"One of," "two of,"
Sometimes "three of" items
Tempting treasure-sifting shoppers,
Bargain-needing families,
Women seeking up-brand names at low-brand prices...
Our wives, followed by their husbands,
Acquiescent, but quiescently seeking
Seeking a thrift shop oasis.

A cast-off dining set beckons,
Sturdy enough, if a little battered,
To make us solemnly content to wait
Carted clothing trundling
Off to fitting rooms.


He shuffled up with a foolish grin.
"I think I'll join this convocation of
Waiting gentlemen.
My wife is a shopper...
She'll close the place down."

I moved a chair and gave some space;
Strangers become brothers in this place.

Five minutes on,
I knew he was a vet:
Army, Vietnam Nam...
"I don't like to think about it,"
Cleared his throat,
"Never can forget."

I turned to look at him.

"A little girl came running,
With her hand behind her back.
She only stood this high," he said,
And showed me with his palm her height,
"They carried grenades that way...
All of 'em...couldn't tell which ones...
Sergeant told us, 'Don't ever check...just shoot.'"

The voice trailed off....

I sat sweating in a thrift store,
Captive of my own politeness,
Half a century,
Half a planet,
Transported in his words
into a soldier's Hell.

"So I shot...
Nothing else to do."

Silence then.

A total stranger staggering
under the weight of having
Murdered his Albatross....
Of having carried this thing,
This memory,
Inside him all these years,
Of finding me,
The unsuspecting thrift shop guest
Who'd listen to his lonely tale,
Perhaps so he could earn some rest....

I, his unwitting Confessor,
Uncertain what to say,
Certain something must be said...
Certain nothing could be said...
Sat dumb, but understanding
The wisdom of confessional dividers,
The private comfort of two booths
Where prayerful exchanges
Intersperse uncertain silences,
Present in the overhanging need:
Demanding sorrowful returns,
Impending memories of sorrows...
And lonely trudgings home....



(Connections with Fr. Laurence's "Riddling confession finds but short shrift," in Romeo & Juliet, and Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner")

Who is this old man sitting in the tattered old chair,
Yelling French at Mad Dog Vachon,
Bragging about the Crusher's capacity for beer,
Chortling at the desolation of the British Bull Dogs?

Smoking his cigars to their very ends in his old pipe,
Spitting plug tobacco juice
Mostly in the can beside us as my Grandma gags....
The French they speak to each other
Should include requests for pardon....

This raving lunatic is my Grandpa Charles,
And I am five and six and seven,
Sitting on his lap,
Believing every word the Gospel truth:
Seeing Vachon as the savior of French Canada,
The Bulldogs for the evil nation they proclaim,
Kegs of beer as quantities strong men crush.

This old Frenchman whose horse days are done,
Who barely knows to sit still
Though he is a passenger now,
Beside my father...
Knows magical tricks to stun and spell me:
Pushing his teeth out with his tongue,
Leaking smoke from his ears,
Tamping burning coals with his thumb...
An old man who refuses to be old,
Who sits and raves at wrestlers on TV.

Stubborn Frost's last throes,
Daily sun-beleaguered, still
Chill weakly each night.

Exposed veins of voles,
White hair receding from lawns...
Old Winter grows bald.

Swans trumpet to tell
Iced panes a liquid story;
Just fools tread old ice.

Lingers Winter still;
The sun broods over gray clouds;
Vaporous Spring stirs.

Cloven seasons stall,
Though migrants race to their nests
Expecting warm skies.

My heart leaps to see
Faith in action ev'ry Spring...
Surety of Life!

Remember When

You come to the end of those long roads
You've staggered down,
When you have fallen and can only drag
Your sorry self around;
Remember then that home
Still is the place Frost told us
They have to take us in
When there's no place else left
For us to go.

Remember when
You've no where else to turn
Because those bridges you have burned
Will no longer carry you across;
Because you're spurned by friends you've spurned;
Remember then that all's not lost;
A humbled soul still finds
That home remains a waiting friend...
When you remember when....

To see another day;
A bloke just nodded at me
While I was on my way.

A lady smiled, and
Genuine she seemed
So that I smiled back,
As if to say,
"You're right; life's not so bad,
Though now I am alone;
Think of the times I've had,
Though now I am alone."

I think I'll stay around to see
What turns up next...
Because an old friend called
To say we ought to see a show;
Called up to say he'd thought of me...
Meant earlier to call,
"But you know how busy life can be..."
(Indeed, I must admit I don't.)

(A little hope is still a little hope.)

Tweedle One and Tweedle Two
Stood impatient at the Gate
Waiting on each other to go in
"You go first," said Number One;
"By all means, NO!" said Tweedle Two,
"I'll always follow you!"

So still they stand, the Tweedle Twins,
Humbugs for life's old manners,
Immobile human bowling pins
So bent on form and social matters....
Come rain or snow, they remain so,
Determined to the last to hesitate
On point of order at the garden gate.

Published March 16, 2013

Melody,
I brought you red roses,
Just opening in glory
Because you felt this morning…
That you weren’t
Beautiful...

Because
I saw you
Standing
Tentative,
Three times
Before the
Mirror.

I,
Your greatest
Admirer,
Know that
You are
Beautiful….

Of lesser beauty,
These roses belong
In the presence of
Your Beauty.

Love always…
Your Admirer,
Don

David spied Bathsheba sitting in Uriah's bath
Up on a roof one night, before he fell into her arms...
Then bathing wouldn't cleanse Jehovah's wrath;
Bathsheba's man and baby came to harm.

Samson saw Delilah; they caused a perfect storm;
A plague of woe from love was roused,
'Til, blind and chained, the mighty man performed
The feat of strength that rattled down the house.

Antony and Cleopatra fell to each other's charm,
Just who it was who conquered whom is still unfixed.
We only know a serpent stung her in the arm,
And Tony died a lonely man, perplexed.

A flower stood alone out in a lonely glen....
"If love appears to you," Persephone would say,
"There may be thrill at first, dear friend.
Beware, beware!  Hades must have his day."

"The course of love ne'er did run smooth,"
The Bard was wont to say, and fully I agree,
The human heart may promise love and truth,
Then wander off in quest of agony.

Let the springtime follies find their place,
And every admin find his clarion call.
Faculty and staff find hiding space;
The dice are cast and heads must fall.

The changing of the guard makes haste;
Outside the trickling melt is slow.
Quickened blood and whitened face...
Colleagues lost.... We wonder who will go.

House cleaning goes with spring, I guess;
We tend to move those articles of ease,
Ignoring those who have the power to oppress...
Whose absence might bring summer on the breeze.

He didn't see the patch of ice;
She had closed her eyes for just a bit.
When she looked,
Guardrails tearing...
No time to shout,
Windows blowing out,
Merciful airbags slamming oblivion
Through muffled thudding
sliding,
rolling,
plummeting
plummeting
down.

Silence....

"Some day, if we die at the same time,"
His mother had said,
"We want to be together in the grave."

An ominous request, that,
And one to be perused, ignored,
Revisited now
As her life hovered
"Ten percent," the doctors said.
Shattered body, all alone
.../.../....../..................
Alone.......

They were together again.


"Do you remember what they asked?"

"I do."

"And do you think...?"

The mortuary
Obliging,
Compassionate,
Arranged them
Arms encircling,
Her head upon his chest...
Embraced in life,
Embraced in death.

Lowered gently down,
A warming day,
In spite of snow,
A circling of friends around,
A mercy to have lived and died
Through every harm
Encircled in each others' arms.

Prohibition came, but not to Whiskey Hill.
A man has got to eat; a drunk must have his fill.

Old Abner dug a basement before fall
Beneath the milking barn at night;
Dug down and mortared up a wall;
Bought copper sheets and hammer-fit 'em tight,
Disguised his vent holes in the stall
By countersinking posts to keep them out of sight.
Set down a trapdoor and a sturdy stair,
Strawed the lot and penned up his old mare.

In all he did, he didn't tell his wife a thing;
He reasoned there was money to be made...
More than the crops would ever bring,
More than the eggs the chickens laid,
He'd be enriched by moonshine in the spring.

He learned to ferment mash from an old book,
Soaked down a bag of corn and let it sprout,
Waited twelve full days before he took a look,
Cracked kernels, poured on water, boiling hot,
Then pitched the yeast and left his hidden nook,
And all the while kept his mouth shut;

Seven days and Sunday passing by,
Old Ab could wait no more;
Ate supper quick and told his wife
He'd one more feeding chore...
Stole to the barn and shoo'ed the mare aside,
Pulled up the vent posts from the floor,
Climbed down and lit a fire inside
Beneath the still to let the vapors soar.

A thrill began as drops began to fill the jug;
The fore-shot blended in as Ab forgot
That methanol would poison off the slug,
So when a shot he took, his breathing stopped.

Above, impatient Molly stamped, then paced
Hungrily in her pen, shoved to reach her hay
And dropped the standards in their place,
Plugged tight the vents, above where Abner lay.

When Hildy woke, her husband still was out;
She walked down to the barn, no sign to see;
And thought it odd the horse was out...
The cattle lowing hungrily for feed.

The sheriff came to have a look;
No luck had he,
Old Hildy sold the place and moved away.
Where she went and how remains a mystery.
A cousin bought the place: house and barn and still (unseen).
His sons, exploring, found old Abner in the spring
Beneath the horse's paddock where he lay.

Leaves have disappeared,
Only the last,
The fallen fruit remains,
Fading red and waiting frost.

Not yet visible, the latent buds
Hang silent now on leafless boughs....

Fallen summer's work
In this garden of the lost
Beneath autumn branches lie:
Graveyards of apples.

Only the passing deer
Bend low to pick the last of harvest up:
Provender quick, an easy meal
Before the coming snow.

Chill fingered knife,
Ice laser penetrates epidermis,
Cracks the brittle sternum,
Then only gives a tickling touch
There at the porches of the heart;
Aortal rhythms pause and tense,
Resting, moving on...
Pausing, resting, moving on.

Slow wintering this...
Six months past death,
The heart, still beating
After that last breath,
Is mine.

The beating in this winter cold
Rejects fear's hold,
Melts the blade of ice,
Reserves the final breath
Until another day,
Provides me reasons now
To love and to be loved.

So it is that here in winter
I **** my head to hear
A trickling song of melting snow,
A thawing fear, a warming hope.

Seasons come and go, and nights and days
Revolving take each other's place.
Life and death for us still in the web of time
Hold constant power until
Eternity steps in and takes us home.

"Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow,
I will fear no evil, for Thou, Oh Lord, are with me."
---King David

How many times I lay
On that old couch
Just through the doorway
Where she shuffled from the table to the stove
Bringing food to dad,
In for supper late,
Or moving dishes to the sink
While I rested from the day,
Just lying there,
Unaware of conversations
I was soaking in.

"I should have sold the winter wheat
A week ago.
No telling how far down the price will go
Now that Russia's stopped our sales."

"Pizza, two for seven dollars again;
Apples three pounds for a dollar;
Bread for seventy-nine."

Or heard his offhand orders for next morning:
"Fencing's got to be done at Henry's.
Boys! I need one of you to check the pastures.
Take some salt and mineral along!"

Mother seldom spoke, or if she did,
She gave correction,
Reported pizza inventories, or bread.
Asked clarifying questions,
But always the creaking oven door
Or the running of rinsing water.

I awoke this morning at three,
Almost a year after my fathers death
From a restless dream of lying there.

Heard my mother's sounds,
My father's voice,
Life as once it was,
Mundane and wonderful
From the couch around the corner of the door:
A living memory
I would no more expunge
Than to remove my own name.

In a dream state,
Attentive now to sounds
Grown too late significant,
Too late sweet,
Almost too painful now,
I lay,
Half aware or half awake...
Thankful to live a memory so real,
Unaware I was transfixed
Inside a memory
Moving lightning speed
Through dreams....

As he was readying to leave,
Perhaps to go down to do one last chore,
I heard my father's footstep at the door.

"Dad, I wanted you to know
I love you very much!"
I spoke the words,
Loudly, so he heard.

I heard him clear his throat,
Say something about getting back to work.

And I awoke, a full day's drive away
From that old couch,
Itself five miles up the hill
From the buried urn where his cold ashes lie.

The check from the oil company came,
Six zeroes before the decimal.
"Some mistake," he wrote,
And sent it back.

"No mistake," the return said,
"Check is correct,
And more to come."

So what to do?
"Mother, get the kids.
We'll go to town."

Check deposited safely into savings,
The teller's awestruck service a memory,
The old truck headed to the Bean & Feed.

New rubber boots for everyone!
Lunch at McDonalds and home again,
A low-key celebration of a million dollar day.

A week or two later,
Father and son drove to a neighbor's auction
Looking for a grain drill,
Not the new-fangled air style,
But a gang of *** drills yoked together,
Heavy and cumbersome to move,
But cheap to operate...easier to fix.

When the bid hit $13,000.00,
Dad faltered...shook his head...
Let the prized drills go.

"Dad! We won't find a set that cheap!
It's not as though we can't afford it!"

"There'll be other drills!"
Was all he said.

(Can't let a little money get into your head.)

If I grow old and find myself alone,
I will take my breakfasts slowly
At Denny's.

I'll sit quiet at the counter
On a swivel chair and
Wait for a waitress' hand
On my shoulder
As she fills my coffee up.

I'll make small talk and hope to hear,
"How was your breakfast, my dear?"

And I will remember my wife
And miss my family,
And wonder what's left for an old man...
Knowing better times have come and gone,
But thankful, for a little while,
The comfort in a waitress' smile.

(Props to Tawnia and her crew, Breakfast at Denny's, Billings, MT, August 12, 2012)

"Who is," I think,
"To say which of Time's seeds will stay
And what their harvests be?"

The spiteful word,
The slamming door,
The choice
To sit or flee,
To stop or have one more,
To speak cautious words or bold,
Harvests all must reap,
And each in their own time
Reveal the ends of germinations,
The husbandries of choice,
Fertilizations or starvations
Through growing seasons
Moments, Hours, Years, Centuries long;
But always harvests bountiful or spare.

Frost's Way leads on to way;
A word becomes a deed,
Born restless from a thoughtful seed.
A gesture bright with hope
Might lead to revolutions
Or end its journey on a rope.

A word of kindness, Aesop said,
Could save a lion in a net;
A mouse he'd spared
Could not forget.
Neither now
Should we.

Three Nails (...)
Not so many as to denounce
A job done to make me well.
Three rudimentary spikes to nail
A man's own flesh to wood.
Three nails cannot
Seem so much to proffer;
Human efforts complementing
God's sacrificial offer.

A self-inflicted crucifixion?
Yes, I would do my part;
Would do me good, I think,
To offer up an offering to God.

So let this painful work,
Human endeavoring,
Perfection capturing,
Begin.

A simple thing, I think,
To hoist and hammer
Nails into myself,
A manly job to undertake
Impaling self
To spare my God
A little work.

The first, perhaps
Most painful...
To stop the feet
Their wandering ways,
To give me pause for just a bit
To meditate in pain
And to reflect or to project
Myself in better ways.

                  .

Then on to nail number two,
One hand to hold the nail
And one the hammer.
The pain intense
Impacts my good intent.

                       .

And yet, I've nailed number two,
And finding where the problem lies,
I have no way to nail thrice.

My living flesh begins to writhe
Its will-ward way,
E'en though in sky-ward
Agony my soul now wails.

Then I remember
Someone said,
"Your crucifixion stands
Upon a different hill,
Hangs on a different tree."

                   . . .
Though I can never end my flesh,
He paid my debt for me.

No sense at all. No sense at all.
Shucked off your slippers;
Ran away from the ball.
Out on the streets,
Over the hill...
Run away, Jill,
For your Jack.

Left your home,
Left your hearth;
Broke your mother's
Sweet mirth;
Abandoned
Your father's advice.

For a roll in the mud with old Jack;
For a roll in the mud with old Jack.

I wonder...
Will you ever
Come back?

The weary day was slowly ending;
A long bus ride had started;
A hundred thoughts were whirling
Down to settle in my tired head.

The driver's day was half way done;
Day was slow...several rounds to go.
We made small talk about the dying sun
And watched the traffic moving slow.

Four stops down and deep within
The concrete canyons...another stop ahead
I stopped mid-thought to gaze upon
A man standing, suited all in red.

"Now, that's a suit!" was all think I said.
"He's always in a suit like that,"
The driver smiled, "Sometimes in purple,
Sometimes in blue, or in this red."

We chuckled as we passed vermilion man;
The driver mused, "He has a business case...
Waited here for years at this bus stand,
Dependably in style, standing in his place."

The driver's words became a check to cash
For dressers-up in gray and blue and brown:
Standers-out must add persistence to panache
If would-be standers-out intend to hang around.

"Best be out-standing if
You're planning to stand out!"

Published November 23, 2012

I imagine a fighting arena
Huge and closed.

In one cornered space
Tower Hegemonic Forces
Champions of dominant culture.

In other corners,
Trending,
Waxing,
Waning,
Anxious for their turn
To test their powers
Crouch the Up and Comers,
Ever-hungry crowds of Up and Comers.

Traction is slippery
On this tenuous battlefield;
Spittle and catarrh;
Blood, sweat, tears;
**** and *****:
Fluid proof of bodies
Denied a single humanity,
Mingle to confound
Desperate din of strugglers,
Seeking clear divisions to conquer.

On-lookers, deafened in cacophony,
Cannot see the uselessness.
Careful observers
Can but surmise what the prize
Desired might be,
But always there is the struggle.

Deny we the possibility of order
Ignore we an Outside Law
Suggest we an endless possibility
Worlds without end
Positions simultaneous
Moving in all directions or none
Claim we the future as ours

Defy we realities of law external
Look we inward-outward simultaneously
To become one or none or all
Reject a single story
Saw we the Arms from Truth
Reduce we the Other to I

Forget we the order of Universes
Without-Within
The clockwork structures
Atomic
Celestial
Genetic
Physical
Biological
In and or-ganic

Reorder or Retell we the Cyclical Tales
Birth and Rebirth
Seasons and Times
Journeys of stars swirling through space
Endless flights of planets
Endless migrations of living things
Each rhyming to universal rhythms
Watts and amperes circular-linear mysteries
Predicting futures from their undisputed histories

Deny we external truth
Held here in the gracious grasp of gravity
Warmed gently by a tolerant star
Inhabitants of a universe
Unable to explain itself
Or even how its atoms came
To repel and to attract
In perfect tensions
Or to unleash energies
Predictable and measurable
In milliseconds and millenniums

---------------------------

Marionettes macabre
Cut loose from our strings
Dancing slowing dirges
Proclaiming opening spaces
Beneath closed skies
Denying a Maker
Rejecting hymnody to sing
Ditties laden with lies.

Summer stands in shadows, silent.
She has reasons
Here in Autumn's dark-ning chill,
Here at the cleaving of the Seasons...
Some harvest in; some still to go
Before the staying cold,
Before the piling snow.

Chill in the air; hesitation in the breath...
Footsteps pounding on the hardening street,
A steaming sprite an opened door escapes.
Everywhere a tucking in, a tucking up,
A nervous shrug, a cautious smile denies
Winter's coming blast of cold.

Scent of wood smoke
Flares the nostrils
Evokes childhood rites,
Calls stragglers to the burning leaves.

The garden meeting adjourned and moved...
Management abruptly cleared the premises,
Canceled return visits,
Speculations inconveniently disrupted,
Wonder-rousings interrupted...
We found ourselves somehow
Standing on the Great Outside.

No wistful entreatments heard He,
The Grand Proprietor,
In spite of our new knowledges,
Our now-wise forays philosophical,
Our sophisticated posturing;
He seemed without empathy
In His Garden's sudden closure,
In our ejection and dismissal.

Stumblers of unexpected freedom,
Following a shadowed river
Narrowing down into a Valley,
Darkening down into a pinprick end,
We gaze behind, ahead, behind,
To see, high sword gleaming,
The standing doorman, glowering.

Eden, receding from our view,
Serpent joins us as we walk,
"Where were we when we left our talk?"
His lowered voice renews.
We notice now, the air is chill
As an endless sun slips down
Behind a darkening hill.

If you laugh, my love,
What will I do?
I'll see the world in brighter hue,
And I will laugh with you.

If you smile, my love,
What will I do?
I'll rest easy, seeing such a view,
And I'll repay your smile to you.

If you frown, my love,
What will I do?
I'll never rest to see your frown,
And I'll run fast to hunt it down,
And when I do,
I'll bring a smile right back to you.

If you agree to hold my hand, my only love,
What will I do?
I'll take your hand and share the hold;
I'll hold your hand while we grow old.

And if you die?
What will I do?
I'll wait in silent memory of your laugh;
I'll wait my life to seek your smile again;
I'll hold you gently in my memory's hand;
I'll wait, of course, and see you once again.

A week of pills awaits your mother
In their little plastic bins;
Remembering them is now her bother
A handful each, across the labeled row.

Saturday's her day to fill,
One each,
A steady line of soldiers:
Pills to calm her and to thrill,
Pills to orient her heart...
To end the day...and start it.
To speed the ticker up,
Or to ****** it.

Then of course, the irony...
(We can't forget this part!)
Pills to make the side-effects
Of other pills depart.

Therapies with warnings are included,
What to take with food or take without,
And whom to call should side-effects appear.
(No one ever reads a word;
The print is much too small)...
"Besides, this is the only cure."

A pharmaceutic's pleasure is
Dispensing colored regulators...
Encapsulated or enterically en-coated...

To **** the cancer?
An important goal...
But more, I think,
The goal should be
To save the patient....

Finding myself away from you,
I wonder now
How we survived
Pre-cell phone,
Pre-Internet
Pre-instant
Everything.

Then I remember
Poets of the past
Whose lovers waited
Months,
Or even years....

Napoleon's letter to his Joséphine de Beauharnais,
Having been away on campaign for months,
"Coming home in three days...."
(And then his coded lover's words.)

Or Donne's "Valediction Forbidding Mourning,"
Reminding her of love's elasticity, fine as beaten gold,
Before he left his wife to journey far;

Or Ezra Pound's translation of the letter
From the Chinese merchant's wife
Whose love had driven her to journey
As far as Cho Fu Sa....

I realize the softness of my day,
The way 21st Century love hangs
Eternal or ephemeral,
Electrically upon the ethereal air...

Commit myself again to you.
Thirty-two years is
A long time and a short time
In the scope of centuries of lovers,
An eternity of generations who remember
Better loves in spite of harder lives.

My love is all for you.

Your old brown chair sits waiting for you
Here behind me as I write, thirty years after your death.

You, the quiet bachelor with the twinkling eyes
Smoking pipe and soft French voice.
Always Charlie’s second,
A good mechanic, but a better blacksmith.

When the police said you couldn’t drive anymore,
You went home and died of sadness.
Unable to leave home, you stayed.

I still remember the day
The ambulance screamed southward
As I played on Grandpa’s lawn.

It was you on your way out,
Going in style.

Published July 09, 20

Scorching summer heat
Makes winter cold seem pleasing
Discordant reason

Sun's going down...

Around my miniature height,
Gloom is gathering itself
To usher in the night.

Beside the darkening feet
Of towering trees,
Shade-cooled and looking up,
I see sunlight climb
The upward reaches
Of tall pines.

Leaving shadows far below,
Green needled branches
****** new growth:
Yellow-candled greening flames,
To see the sun,
Greeting and adieu-ing
Steady moving days.

Light and life,
Ageless quests:
Upward reaching light
Downward breaching water,
Insatiable thrusting,
Splitting stone,
Spewing oxygen.

Monstrous undertakings
Glorious oversights.
Fitting past times for giants,
Mountain dwellers,
Living at a pace too slow
For careless passers-by to see.

Silent pines
Contemplate endless days,
Moving or un-moving,
Resolute certainty,
Imperceptible sojourners
Dominating vertical empires;

Joyous, silent soldiers march
Up and down these mountain sides,
While I, mere mortal, pass
Ant-like,
Scurrying in wonder,
Aware the urgency
Of ephemeral routine,
Mortal emergency...

Beneath Tall Pines.

Bellies up, paws out
Dead nomads lie appealing
Road **** suicides

The day is ebbing, shadows fall,
While twilite deepens nite birds call
The works of mortals fade away;
In quiet care a sorrow lay;

Soothing evening breezes whisper,
Telling of forgotten lands-
Softly speak of Eden's Gardens,
And of earth's dear no-man lands.

Murmur of sea island countries,
Drowsy birds, faint scents of flowers,
Silver moons and star lit meadows-
Tell of slow, enchantful hours.

But the vision swiftly changes
Northland wastes and solitude
In their place lied coldly calling ,
Luring your adventurous mood...

Beckoning to unclimbed mountains,
Treacherous glaciers, unexplored,
Ice and rivers, frozen fountains,
Long from which Aurora soared.

But the zephyr now has ended,
In the midst of Yukon flats
Come, regretful, to the present-
Just remember where you're at.

But in future desolation
When your thoughts are glum and sour,
Think back thru your "Syncopation"
To the zephyr of this hour.

And when wind and winter harden
All the leafless, loveless land,
It will whisper of the garden--
It will bid you understand.

And the moral of the story-
(For it has one as all should)
Is: "When all are shorn of Glory--
God alone will choose the good."

But let's leave that as it stood...

For from here, where ere you wander,
Whether it be near or far,
Without stopping long to ponder--
Just be thankful where you are.

Beneath the wind-blown clouds,
Shadows promise rain
But not today.

Sealed water bearers bluster by,
Too driven and too high to quench
Panting prairies where they lie.

Thin skirts of rain begin descent...
Devoured in the desiccated air.

The parched land waits,
Inhabitants determined to survive,
Perhaps to thrive,
When slower, heavier clouds arrive.

Persistent genes of prairie dwellers
Early ripen to store quick growth
Within their husky seeds,
Bear children to mature
At lightning speeds,
Live rugged lives
Blessed sporadically with green
That quickly fades to brown,
Wait patiently to send
Their children on ahead.

So life remains and waits
Beneath the scuttling clouds
Enduring sun and shade,
In hope of rains.

The apple orchard hums,
Bee-fully content,
Flower petals relax their budded fists
Revealing scented, open hands.

Immersed in pink and white,
Lungs filled in apple scents,
I wander, camera ready-height
Capturing...or so is my intent...
Bee-full flowers and flower-full bees.

Yesterday was winter;
Tonight must come a storm...
Skies to the south and west are gray.

But now I stop to breathe an hour,
Walk out among the apple trees,
Look up through heavens of flowers,
Revel with the honey-drunken bees.

After the milking's done,
Farmer gone to house and bed,
Rag-tag tabbies, half-breed furs,
Assemble by the milking stool
Yowl a bit, then settle down to purrs.
Rosined up, a straw-***** bow
Emits a violinic fiddle's skirl,
And one by one the mousers
Stand on twos to take a matted floor.

Come, let us see you pirouette,
You puissant pouncers.
Lightly spin those furry toes;
Sheath deep those claws to put
Perfection in your prances;
Balance on your tails, and spin;
Exercise or exorcise in cattish dances
The feline feelings you are in.

Dance happily and furiously...
Or sinuously and slow...
Whatever moods mouse-
Murderers can feel or know.
Enjoy the dance, ye half-breed cats.
Never mind the jealous schemes of mice,
Nor terroristic plots of leagues of rats.

On this day,
Twenty-eight years ago,
I realized that love is not divided...
Not halved between.
A father's love for his children...
Is a multiplication,
An expansion.

How do I explain?

Meanings of life change;
Additions and subtractions aside,
Love multiplies...matures:
Exult or suffer, it endures
Even the agony of division.

Mainly now, love suffers,
But always it endures.

Observations succinctly made
Bespeak fresh graves of newly
Interred friends or strangers
Turn on unexpected
Awarenesses of lives now spent.
Right or wrong,
Inexplicably we are torn
In two as part of us makes quick
Exits to fields of forgetfulness, and yet
Some part of us clips these memories to hold.

Trees forcing sap to bursting buds
Giving leafy glories up to God.

Birds whose winged flight returning high
Fill northern skies with glory cries.

Soft calves and lambs in meadows skipping
Give glory in their lowing and their bleating.

Young stalks' persistent way through old decay
Announce green and growing glory be's along the way.

So you and I with sweet spring sighs
Hear and see and feel Nature's glory cries
And echo in our human tongues,
"All glory be to God!"

All Glory BE!

When Balaam's donkey spoke,
He didn't mention research words,
Didn't point out answers obvious
In spite his quantitative methods.

Balaam, prophetic man for hire,
Climbed four mountains,
Burned a herd of cows in fire,
Tempted Heaven's curses down.

Multiple perspectives brought
One conclusion, tight and rich:
Balaak wanted curses hot;
God caused an *** to kvetch.

My mother used to say to me
When I was bent to stray,
"If you know what's right as you begin
You've no reasons left to pray."

So Balaam's triangulations grabbed
Perspectives from multiple views,
Incensing old King Moab
By blessing multitudes of Jews.

Between the Author
And the Reader,
The Text lies waiting.

The Author,
Only partially aware
Of All Intents and Purposes
In spite of careful diction,
Forms a multi-messaged bolt
To drive full meaning
Home.

The Text,
Scripted in language,
Printed on paper,
Inked in pixels,
Floated in air,
Carries meaning
in a leaking bucket
Denoting and Connoting
Implications only.

The Reader,
Seeking something
Not even realized,
Comes partially engaged,
Intent to dabble
Or to glean
Or find some thought
On which to meditate.

Somehow in this tenuous state
Between mortal thinkers,
Ideas cross synaptic bridges -
Through the air and light,
Tempered by time,
Culture-cured,
Enriched by vocabulary,
Electrically ignited...
Combustion!

A plain woman in a checkered dress
Trapped on a windy hill
With a man whose every thought
Was crops and cows and bad weather coming,

You cooked every meal on time,
Served lunches exactly at 12:00
When the hands aligned.

You drove "flagger,"
moving trucks and tractors
From field to field,
Raised two boys and two girls
To be God-fearing citizens,
Buried one in shock and disbelief;
And then moved on.

I know your secret.

There on that swept-neat farmstead,
Under the green roofs,
Beside the red barn,
In your white walls,
The rational order,
The unnatural neatness
Belied you.

Lydia...
You of the Romantic Heart,
You of the secret desire and passion.
Beside your chair in that sparse house
Stood a stack of romance novels
In easy reach,
An escape from harsh reality.

What guilty ecstasies you managed to steal
Came five miles from the post office,
Ninety-five cents a copy,
Wrapped in brown paper,
Tucked in a galvanized milk pail.

Ahhh.
The stolen moments!
The bliss of passions and handsome strangers
Ready to take you from dry and wind-blown land.

The day he died
The sun rose just the way
It always did on cold December mornings:
Frost crystals on his back,
Breath steaming in the winter air,
A few sparrows chattering,
Molly at the barn mooing news:
Milking time!
Frozen water tank!
Hunger pains!
And where was Farmer now?

So he yawned and stretched himself,
Looked at the house whose walls
Allowed his master's voice to filter through thin, cold air:
Heard an oven door squeak wide,
The telephone ring,
Morning voices and the creak of floors,
And then the door cracked open.

Full scents emerged:
Fresh baking from the oven,
The farmer's coat and boots,
Laundry soap in fresh washed jeans,
And a bowl of food with milk
Steaming for him.

The diesel tractor coughed and roared,
Semi-warm from its head-bolt heater sleep,
and sent thick cloud plumes to winter sky
Before the engine warmed enough to move
The wheels' crunching pressure, packing snow.

Breakfast down, and morning chores to follow,
The St. Bernard stretched himself,
Pushed through the old iron gate
And followed in the tractor's track
To see the morning feeding in the snow.

No one could tell him he was getting old,
And maybe was a little stiff and slow
To follow tractors as they plowed their way
Through newly fallen snow.

An hour later, the man, the tractor and the dog
Had made their way below the farmstead hill
To feed a sheltered herd just out of wind's cold way.
What happened next is painful still to say.

The tires sank through crusted snow and spun
But forward movement failed it in its rounds;
Reversed, a chain came loose and outward flung
to pull the faithful follower down.

So what is there to say about a friend whose harm
And death came accidentally at my hand?
I knelt there in the snow and held him in my arms,
Sobbing sorrows... begging him to try to stand.

But he only looked up at me with brown, sad eyes,
Hard broken from the crushing of the wheel,
And moved his tail a little bit to show he was content
To lie there in my arms, and shuddered once and then was still.

The cows looked on impatiently,
Steam rising from their hides,
And saw me bawling on my knees
and begging mercy from my silent God.

My father,
Who never marched a drill,
Nor fired an angry shot,
Recounts fond memories
I've heard so many times:
How long ago, when I was very young,
He and our neighbor,
Up before the sun,
Engaged in tractor battles
(He's very sure he won).

My father woke those mornings,
Early 1960s,
With the popping cough of
Diesel International tractor cylinders
Clattering out white smoke...
Then blue and black,
As engine heat and friction
Tightened gaps and sealed compression,
And the motor steadied into an even roar.

Across the county road
Our only neighbor led or followed suit,
Sending smoke and sound
To drown the morning songs
of robins and meadowlarks.

Fifty years later,
Dad laughs in recollection,
"We started rising just a little
Earlier each day.
Starting up our tractors
In a sort of game
Called, 'Who's out earliest?'"

Six became a quarter of,
Then five-thirty backed to four.
One tractor or the other roared,
Early and then earlier to pull
Into the waiting fields.
When three-thirty came around
My mother shook her head,
But if she said a word,
I haven't heard.

They even started engines up
Before they ran,
Milking buckets swinging,
to their barns to chore.
As early became earlier
In the little farmers' war.

One day in town,
Entirely by happenstance,
A meeting came between the two.
My father, being younger,
Had energy for more,
But the neighbor shook his head,
Grabbed his hand and said,
"Let's stop this foolishness.
I don't know about you,
But I need my sleep."

The farmer battle ended then.
A hand shake and a smile
Between two farmer friends,
Created country lore,
Remembered here a while,
As "The Early, Earlier War."

Stage One begins the fun;
First sips reveal the bitter
Blast of hops and alcohol.
BAC is point oh-three, which reads as
"Confident & Daring."
Attention Span and
Flesh are flushed
In dual ways,
(Please catch my drift.
Euphoric people, still
May have a need for shrift.)
Sometimes such things are said or done
That later are not wished.

Judgment begins to slide
On entry of Stage Two.
A numbness in the tongue,
A blurring of the eyes,
Which do not yet see two.
Sometimes as low as point oh-nine BAC,
"Excitement" names the awkward teetering
Between slow thought and sleepiness.
Stumbled response takes coordination,
But the drinker cannot see his weaviness.

Stage Three arrives at point one-eight
And takes the name "Confusion."
Staggered is the walk, and one can sit
And feel the moving of the world.
The maudlin lover here appears,
Replaced by jealous hate that burns
Or bursts in untoward rage that disappears
In an instant's instant, only to return.

Stage Four is Cousin Stupor,
Threshhold BAC is point two-five.
The drinker turns into a Turtle,
Unmoving, Unaware, but still alive,
He cannot stand nor walk,
May drown upon his *****,
And if he lies, should do so on his side,
Though he cannot without assistance
From a brother or a bride.

Stage Five, Fra Coma, may start at point three-five,
Cool skin, slow breath, heart beat, (just barely),
Asleep he may appear, or dead,
As Death stands near.

Stage Six occurs at BAC point five,
Bar Tender Death moves on
To find someone Alive.

Bill loaded the truck with hard red winter wheat
One night so as to beat the scales at morning light.

Before sun up, he kissed Margie on the cheek
And roared out of the yard,
Overload springs sagging,
Engine fierce, but groaning,
Toward the town.

Two miles out,
The scale light said "Open,"
Giving Bill a momentary chill.

Shifting down, he exited
Before arriving Scale Hill.
A gravel detour waited
To take him on the long way 'round
And bring him back the other side of town.

Most situations similar
Go from bad to worse.
The truck eased down into a swale.

Beneath the surface gravel,
A bed of soggy clay
****** down the wheels
And stopped the farmer's way.

The creaking truck began to settle,
Testing Bill and
Leaving him chagrined
As the Transportation Deputy
Drove up to see the mess.

"Looks like you need a pull!"

What could Bill say?

And so he took the offer,
Then followed flashing lights
Back to the scale, and paid
A hefty fee to compensate
For being cheap too early
And learning much too late.

Slip into a syncopated
Yaw that staggers some,
Never touches others.
Come back home if you don't have the chops, or
Open up to ranges
Pleasant...
Awkward...
Totter some and Tatter some.
Insiders,
Outsiders
Nestle or Negate whenever Music syncopates.

I remember reading
Martin Luther King, Jr's
Letter from Birmingham Jail
Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom
Mark Twain's Huck Finn
DuBois' Souls of Black Folk
For the first time

The words of Chief Joseph
Sitting Bull
Tecumseh
James Welch
and Alexie Sherman
And others of indigenous kind
Linger like arrows in my mind.

Of course, there's
Gilgamesh's forlorn quest for Enkidu;
Osiris, Amun, Ra, and Seth,
Homer's Illiad and Odyssey,
And Virgil's Roman treatment -
(For whom the gods destroy
We all must learn bereavement).

I remember reading
Milton's Paradises (lost and found)
And Dante's Infernal quest for Heaven
Through the bowels of Hell with Virgil's spritely guide
And up the Devil's staircase with Beatrice by his side.
John's Revelation of Times' End;
And LaHaye's money-making Left Behind
Apocalypses here to chill my mind.

I have surveyed Dead Presidents
Washington,
Jefferson,
Lincoln
Both Roosevelts, Ted and Frank,
And Reagan
And smatterings of others...
Then hopped the bookish pond to read
Sir Winston and some others,
Not the least of whom is Gandhi G,
Taught by the Queen to free his brothers.

I have studied
Moses
Job
David
Ruth
Esther
Isaiah
Jeremiah
The Disciples
Paul
and James
(Ironically,
Though Jesus is the "Word"
He never penned one).

British poets's thoughts,
Tale tellers long-dead
Have found their way
Into my head:
Beowulf and Chaucer
Old moral plays
Shelley and Keats
Cavalier Poets
Scott and Brownings
Burns and (not) Allen
Spenser and Shakespeare
Dylan and Tolkien
Lewis and Auden
And so many more
That I leave on the floor

Western Americana I have loved
Hemingway and Steinbeck, all worth the time,
Mari Sandoz' Old Jules, and
Rolvaag's Giants in the Earth,
Keroac went on the road, while
Joseph Kinsey Howard showed us the West
Lewis & Clark in journals scribed
Their journey west and back again

I can't forget psychology
And so I will digress
Or Sigmund's accusation stays
That I have but suppressed:
Ellis, Freud, and Eric Berne,
Pavlov, Skinner, Thorndike, Watson,
Wundt, and Wm James, Piaget and Chomsky
Then Vygotsky and Bandura put a social spin
on cognitive psychology, and Everybody's in.
Diverging and Converging, psychic students, all
Could never make transaction
'Til Rogers tried to make some peace
But Ellis wouldn't have 'im.

And then, of course,
The lighter stuff,
The popcorn of the mind:
Clancy, Rankin, Carole Keene
L'Amour and Will James
Stephen King and Poe,
Cruz Smith and Leon Uris,
Grisham, Deaver, Cornwall,
Asimov, Bradbury and Herbert,
Carroll and Baum...

Under frizzed hair,
The Conscious Operator,
Smacking gum,
Waits with her tails of living wire
To make connections
At Synaptic Central.

The reader
Tilts a page to catch the rays,
Scans for symbols,
Begins to send
And to receive
Electric fires of thought
Traveling in from
Senses Five -
Traveling out from
Schema Library's
Data files -
To meet and
To commingle
At the Board.

With octopal finesse,
The tireless Operator
Plies Neural Central,
Sending quick myriads of thought
To rest or to revive in living files.

Neurons snap and arc;
Their coded leaping fires
Surge message-full
Through cables sheathed
To Synapse Central,
Where in her nimble hands
Fire Control finds slots
And coordinates connections,
During and Long After
The Outward Reading's done.

Even when the Blinds go down
Synaptic Central's work goes on.
The frizz-haired friend steps out to rest;
Sub-Conscious moves into her place
And with unsteady hand
Plays seeming havoc at the Board
Rearranging and Deranging
Delightful dreams, or horrid.

Waking
From a dream
Of irreversible
Actions

Half in
Half out
Between
Two worlds
My only cry
"Thank you, Lord!"

Not so wonderful,
This world is
Not so bad
As the world
Of dreams
I left.

Time to rise,
Prepare for work,
And go.