Knee-deep snow, driven by chilling winds
Blotted out gravel roads and ditches.
Lonely, fence line posts, in rustic rows,
Suffer hoary white in the winter sun.

Only brave or needful venturers brook cold
When wind-free mercury reads 25 below,
But out we went to winter pastures,
Heavy with feed, the old truck,
Tires chained and shovels at the ready
Clawed its way out seven miles to pasture,
And, later, seven miles back.

We boys were riding for the lark,
Enjoying risks, adventures bold
With Dad behind the wheel, no storm or wind
Could stop us, and we scorned the cold.

A hard pull took us up the road one mile,
Til, at the corner, into the lane we headed east
To see old Charlie's truck nosed into the snow.
His neighbors, we stopped to check, at least.

Asleep, too drunk to drive, old Charlie slumbered at the wheel.
"We have to get him out," we said, but Dad just shook his head.
"He's safe right here, stuck in the snow, with half a tank of fuel.
"We'll feed the cows and pull him out if he's still here when we come back.
Perhaps he'll sober up by then, and he'll go home."

How many times we left old Charlie sleeping in a ditch
Between his house and town, I cannot count today.
Sometimes, I think, we saved his life by leaving him
To sleep the vapors off, and other times by taking him away.

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 to the field
Exactly when the clock said "12."

More though,
You drove "flagger" to the men,
Moved trucks and tractors to the fields,
Raised two boys and two girls,
God-fearing citizens,
Buried one in disbelief,
And then moved on
To the routine.

I know your secret, though.
That swept-neat farm:
White buildings,
Green roofs,
Red barns
Belied you in their unnatural order.
You of the Romantic Heart,
You of passion and desire held secret.
Beside your chair in that sparse house
Stood a stack of romance novels
In easy reach
To lend escape
To harsh realities.

Ah! The stolen moments!
Pink-hued bliss of passions,
Handsome strangers,
Waiting there beside your chair
To free you
Of a dry and wind-whipped land.

What pleasures you enjoyed
You stole from books.

What ecstasies you managed,
Came ninety-nine cents a copy,
Wrapped in brown paper,
In a galvanized milking pail,
Five miles from the post office.

Lydia, don't fret.
Don Quixote's spirit
Understands.

All through the night
Heartburn kept him sitting up
Stubbornly refusing
To read the signs:
Indigestion...
Heart attack...
Hiatal hernia....
Indigestion...
Hernia...
Heart attack...
Heart attack..
Heart attack.

By five, he agreed...told Mom
Baking soda wouldn't work.

His son came in from checking calves,
Worrying over the kitchen light,
Surprised to see his dad
Still sitting on the couch.

At, "I guess we could go to town,"
Son and wife moved into action.

"I need some help to dress," he said.
His helplessness filled them with dread.

First, some socks, but wait....
The nails were long, unkempt.
"I haven't been able to bend that far,"
My brother took Dad's feet in hand,
Cut the nails,
Wondering how he'd failed
To see how fragile, pale, old
This man we loved and feared
Had somehow suddenly become.

There probably wasn't time
To trim Dad's nails,
What with the heart attack,
And all.
But one should never head to town unkempt...
An old familial rule...
And one should cut one's own nails...don't even ask...
Another family rule....
And last...
Father has the last word...
The rule that kept him home all night,
Instead of calling 911.

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

My father woke those mornings,
Early 1960s,
With the popping cough of
Worn diesel pistons
Clattering out white smoke...
Then blue and black,
As engine heat and friction
Tightened gaps,
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 meadowlarks and robins.

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

Six became a quarter of,
Then five-thirty backed to four.
One tractor or the other roared,
Early and then earlier
To be the first to pull
Into the waiting fields.
When three-thirty came around
My mother shook her head,
But if she said a word,
I never heard.

These battling neighbors
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,
By happenstance,
A meeting came between the two.
My father, being younger,
Had energy for more,
But old Art Pribnow shook his head,
Grabbed my dad's hand and said,
"Let's stop this foolishness
Before one of us is dead!
I don't know about the hours you keep,
Or what got in our heads,
But I admit, 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 little while,
As, "The Early, Earlier War."

The clock was protected from change in your house.
No Daylight Savings Time admitted to your routines.
We who bordered your life had to adjust or miss your timing.
Your farm the antipodes of ours...straight and neat,
Everything where it ought to be,
No duplication or mess....
A feast for my order-hungered eyes.
I had not yet learned of obsessive-compulsiveness;
I only despised my father's clutter,
His refusal to wear time upon his wrist,
His stubborn old World ways.

I shoveled barley half a hot and muggy day
To load your truck,
Emerged tired, covered with dust,
Raging in a million itches
To receive fifty cents
"To take your girlfriend out."
Most ungrateful, I chafed,
Told anyone who listened...
But now, I smile,
Wishing my labor to have been
A gift, now long ago.

I fell in love with John Deere tractors, gleaming green,
Colored television,
Fresh paint, white and red,
Because of you
Standing in striped Osh Kosh bibs,
Penultimate farmer.

Lydia, your wife,
Danced to the metronome
Of your orderly life,
Escaped only in Harlequin novels
Stacked by her chair.

Until the day everything changed,
Pink drool trailing from your mouth,
Gears grinding as you lost
The memory of clutches,
Tractor care,
Crops to plant
Be ******...
A stroke was taking down another man.

A Saturday we moved your wife to town
Near where you convalesced;
Monday, the Baptist preacher found her.

You ordered mahogany, rich and prime,
For us to bid your Lydia farewell,
Then followed, true to form,
Within the month.

Your children ordered oak, solid and strong,
Wheat sheaves bedeck the top,
Inlaid and waiting,
Ready for the coming harvest.

South Pacific 1944,
Our ship under attack,
Men at the guns,
Zeroes coming in.

Smoke and bedlam,
We three at our turret
Loading the gun:
Projectile.
Powder,
Fuse,
and slam the door
to belch explosives
at the sky.

Man the post
Keep on firing

But then I knew I had to go
And turned toward the hatch.
"Good-bye, Paul,"
I remember someone said.

Half in - half out the door
We took a hit
Direct
That blew Jim's head
between my knees
And on the deck.

Two died instantly
And there I stood
Wondering
About
Higher Orders.

Living under the watchful ticking,
Your "Regulator" clock kept time;
Mercantile calendar days running down.

I never knew you to complain
A day in all your life.

Art Pribnow married you,
Removed you to a little place
West of the Yellowstone River
To farm and set the world in order.

Probably the sun
Checked his schedule
Right over head by seeing laundry
Hanging in straight strung rows
Beside the sharp white buildings,
No stone out of its place.

Only Order
Everywhere, but...
I wonder sometimes.

Around the table, literacy discussion
Turns elitist...
Bemoaning some poor Johnny,
Son of a plumber who does not read
Beyond the practical need,
And has no desire to.

I stop to check my sense of what I have just heard...
Am transported back to a prairie farm
And think of my Father, now in his eighties
Who still feels no need and no sense of loss
For not having read Shakespeare or Kant
For missing Milton's Paradises and Hemingway,
For by-passing Black Elk Speaks and C.S. Lewis.

Every morning, he reads his Bible;
Some nights he reads the mail's
Motley collection of literature:
Ads and politicians and fanatics,
Demanding money and his time,
But mostly money.

"I don't have time to read!"
He shouts, when I suggest a novel.
What literature he has is in his head,
Poems memorized when he was a boy
In a two room school, or
His own lines, written as a young man,
Describing work and friends
Long distant now, but still alive
In memory.

Dad taught me how to read
In different literacies and different texts:
Nuances of sky to read the weather -
What chill or storm or drought was on its way;
Cows and calves and bulls -
Which one was sick or well, dry or bred;
Equipment to diagnose mechanical ailments;
Metals to know which welding rod applied;
Grain, rolled crisp between his hands, a test of ripeness...
Cement to find the perfect mix,
So many literacies...
Dad, the Master Reader of them all...
No wonder he'd no time for books.

Who found he had
Nothing
To Say....

The road winds ahead
I think.
In truth,
I cannot with my human senses tell;
Thick fog and rain and dread...
This path might lead
To the bottom of a well
Or worse...to Hell.
But no, the way behind me led to Hell,
And I have turned my back,
Begun my pilgrim way.

What directions I can find
Point in the way I head,
And mired as I am,
I cannot stay
Nor stand and wait
Nor can I turn retreat...
Been there before...
There's nothing good to eat,
And nothing there
To give me peace,
So I press on.

Push on I must,
For I have heard
Somewhere high above me
An eagle cry,
The promise of a clearing sky,
A vantage point to find
If I have wings.

Blackbirds chuckling in the arbor vita;
Vultures circling high
Against the blue and Sunday sky;
House sparrows scolding in the neighbors' trees;
A robin chorister brings Dickinson to mind,
And I don't mind.

Sunday morning's breakfast's done,
And we have time
To smile a little...
Bashful mornings
Just a little now
Even after thirty years.

Tomorrow storms will come;
Next week a tree will fall;
Shadows must make their surly steps
Even as sun slides down...
It's just the way this old world runs.

But this morning,
This Sunday morning,
Bright and fine,
I rest from all my worrying,
Rest in the love I have with you,
Amazed again to have,
Amazed to hold,
A girl like you.

Broke with the tinkling of chimes,
Bird melodies cacophonous,
And dew-wet sunlight
A million years old, and new again,
As this old world turned round
And brought me back to day.

The dreams and fears of night
Fell all away;
The dog barked out his morning bark
To call me out to play.
Breakfast down and leash a-fixed
W'e were on our way.

A yearling pup's the thing
To take a man's old heart
Right back to spring:
An angle worm,
A water puddle,
And grass to roll in,
The neighbor's dog,
The fire plug....

Who knew the joy of messages
Left on rock and trees?
And joy is found in lifting ears
And nose to test the breeze.

The secret that I think I understand?
It's not the dog who needs the walk;
The leash is for the man
To work out kinks from life
And see the little things
That dogs can see
Without the need to think.

We've set a precedent:
Traded Bergdahl for five Terrorists...
The deal is done.

Questions hovering above and below...
How many loyal lives were lost
To bring a lone deserter back?

How many lives will go because
Five terrorists walked free?

Did Bergdahl set up the deal
To set a precedent
To set up a President?
Were the five men picked to trade
By Us or Them?
Who's running the show?
Who's to blame?
And Whom shall we say is calling
The shots, and who can say
How many lives were paid
For one who just deserts?

Incoming!

Unshaven, old, and nearly spent,
He slouched in his kitchen chair,
Lungs rattling each wheezing breath,
Radiation doing little then,
To control the mass within, or
To prevent the Mass he knew
Would soon begin.

Hard to believe a man
So tough as Rubin always was
Sat stubble-faced and wan
In that early morning sun.

Two years ago,
At 65,
He and his son
Put a ****** on,
Fought a cop,
Nearly won,
Stayed a week in jail,
Paid a $7000.00 fine,
Then bragged it all
Was worth the time
And memories.

I saw him jump,
At 66,
From a moving van,
Six feet up
Like a younger man,
Hell bent to take his fill,
Shovel hard, cursing still,
Cigarette hanging loose
Even with a rattling cough
(He shrugged it off),

And stop.
Always 67,
His last remains crave no nicotine,
No *****, wayward fights,
No carousing old man libertine
Out with his son at night,
And we who watched Old Rubin's days,
Paid our respects and went our ways.

Barely liquid, spitting Spring,
Clear, cold and wet, it clings...
This changeling Life that
Drenches hills and hollows,
Blackens bark in glistening sheen,
Brings mosses to a glowing green,
Shivers calves and lambs, newborn,
Melts the snow and frost, forlorn,
Fills ponds and lakes to overflow,
Erases muddied banks of dying snow.

Later, Summer moves at summer speed,
Urging throbbing plants to seed,
Bustling bees to waken work of flowers
Setting fruit with watering summer showers,
But Spring's cold rain moves buds to swell,
Ruffles robins where they quivering dwell,
Bares branches as they shake and tease,
Standing sleepily for sticky leaves.

So I must shiver out a few wet and chilly days,
Hold fast as Winter, grumbling, slow, demurs,
Knowing Spring's blustery, watery ways
Finesse the cold away and beckon Summer.

We sit,
Witnesses
To Immolation,
Acknowledging Death.
Vap'rous vows now vanished;
Infidelity preceding
The wedding day,
Following after,
Covered deftly under
Lies compounding lies,
One holding true,
One never so,
And so we sit over
Coffee and Divorce,
Now that the truth is out.

We sit,
Witnesses to small talk:
"You may have the furniture";
"Insurance ends in May";
"Do you have a question?"
"There's nothing left to say."

We sit;
She leaves;
Her emptiness
Remains;
We three sit tight,
Uncertain,
Nothing left to say,
But still we sit musing
Coffee and Divorce.

Portia and Bassanio

Brave Portia's lot was cast
Inside a mocking case of lead,
Morrocco came and passed,
Then Arragorn, arrived and left, forlorn.
A list of louts came, failed, and went
Before Bassanio played his turn...
Poor rich Portia's patience spent,
Nerissa's lady solace yearned

Antonio, Bassanio, a troubled pair
A wily shark a loan arranged,
Whose bite, though small,
Beyond compare aimed deepest
To the matters of the heart.

Antonio, about to lose his fortune,
Bemoaned the losing of a friend,
The foiling of a fortune, sunk.

Shylock, certain of his pound of flesh,
Summarily dismissed by gentile gender-bending,
Played as a fool by a woman posing as a man,
Who drove a lawyer's visage in a Portia.

All ended well, at least for "Christian" men...
Life sweetened by the turning of a Jew,
No matter his conversion at duress...
Straight away Portia and Nerissa turned back
A ******* borrower who had landed on his feet,
And sprang their traps to tame their husbands' heat.

King Minos,
Spited by the God of Oceans,
Hesitated but a while
Before poor Pasiphae's bull-headed son
Was penned inside the labyrinth,
And then, as if to throw away the key,
Inventor Daedalus and his dear son
Were for their work a prison tower fee'd.
But they grew wings, for as we know,
An inventor's work is never done...
If only Icarus had listened
And kept a proper place below the sun,
Breugel's painting would have lost
Its distant splashy focal point;
The plowman and the shepherd would
Have stood alone above a perfect sea.

Old Minos never had a chance,
And though the cunning Hunter,
(He, who found the man who
Made a string crawl curving
Through a shell behind an ant),
Had won... decided to disrobe
And take a dip...a foolish act
To choose when Daedalus
Would serve a hot revenge.

Daedalus, who knew the score,
Burned wood to make the water soar;
In vengeance vented spiteful wrath,
And cooked old Minos in his bath.

Can scuttle shade to shade,
A bolting spider
Bringing back the day
My father died
So unexpectedly?

April 2nd,
April 2nd,
Twice
And down again
And scurrying unseen
To thrice.

How is it Time
Can simultaneously,
Throb slowly on
From troubled day
To troubled day,
An angling worm,
Obstinately crawling
Through stubborn clay?

The bull still stands
Out in our yard,
Snorting puffs of steam,
Posing in his threatening stance,
Muted but a little...

He and we
Now
Biding time.

A man's not safe,
Nor woman, either,
So long as this bull's out,
Free to move about
Unpenned.

This meeting of the mice
We hear about
To solve the the problem of the cat
Inspires us now...
To bell the cat...
To pen the bull....

Aye, there's the rub....
As who shall bell the cat,
And who shall pen the bull?

For  now, we go our quiet ways,
Eyes down
Still thinking,
Praying...some,
Contemplating penning up
The bull.

How can I ever lose the memory:

A Model T Ford,
Tires tied with wire and rags,
Arriving loud, but slow,
Rattling as it came,
Steaming as it stopped
At our family farm,
The ancient Ford
John R drove whenever he must go
So far as not to carry self
On short and stocky legs.

The sturdy legs that drove the peddles;
The stubby fingers played
Our family's old pump *****,
While he led in his cracked voice,
And merry German tongue,
"Du, Du, liegst mir im Hertzen,"
While we tried to sing,
"Du, du liegst mir im Herzen
du, du liegst mir im Sinn.
Du, du machst mir viel Schmerzen,
weißt nicht wie gut ich dir bin.
Ja, ja, ja, ja, weißt nicht wie gut ich dir bin."

My mother smiled as she sang,
Moistened eyes the only clue
That she recalled her mother's voice
Inside the song.

A one-room shack
Beside a cattle tank
Out on the prairie
Near our ranch,
Was all he knew of home,
And we, his neighbors,
Loved the little man
Who'd bachelor-ed it
Out on the Western plains.
Not that he had much...
Borrowed electricity
From the power lines feeding
The watering pump;
Cooked and heated with
An old coal stove
My father kept supplied
with hand dug lignite
From a nearby mine;
Treasured German conversation
With the dwindling few
Who knew his mother tongue
(I still can hear him praying
Though I never knew a word).

Spoiled and modern,
I did not know til I was older
How he walked four winter miles into town
To buy a bag of groceries:
Flour, salt, baking soda,
A few canned goods
Sometimes an orange or two,
To stay alive until the path would
Let the old Ford through.

His brother Max, was long since gone.
Alone, John lived in ragged clothes,
A relic of the past,
Widowed, and his children gone,
Holding his ground,
His tar-papered shack,
Making it to church
Or to our place a few miles up the way,
A gentle man, humble in his ways.

At 90 (I cannot forget),
He rode my bicycle;
My brother and I
Stood prop until his short legs
Could pump the pedals.
He circled round us,
An ancient man who shook
And wobbled like a little boy,
Silent in the joy of two wheels running,
And then he fell aside,
Going down like a tree sliced clean,
Falling slowly over on his side.
We ran to him, afraid, just boys
Not reckoning the harm he might have earned.
But, no, we helped him up,
And he brushed off and laughed
His German laugh, and his eyes
Twinkled.

What a man he was!
And is, now in my mind,
Ninety, plus,
To take himself up on a bicycle;
To fall, unbroken,
And to rise,
A smile on his lips,
And twinkling in his eyes.

"First day of Spring tomorrow!"
The Weather Teller says....

Outside, the Death of Winter
Drags along,
Over-acted, under-cut, and slow...
Decaying, ***** piles freshed again
In wet and heavy snow
While water fowl vee North,
Circling low to find slim-margined waters
Lining shores and cupping
Cakes of ice the size of lakes,
Brooding in their rotten state,
And waiting Orders from the Sun,
Whose work it is to usher Spring
In all her greening garb to stand
And bless the annual Burgeoning.

She takes a half a century
To ready up to go;
He stamps his feet and grumbles...
Then stifles, 'cause he knows
She's faithful...
Faithfully she loves;
Faithfully she's true;
It's a better life to love
A girl who's always slow...
Contentment comes
To those who know...
Faithfulness.
===================
Always she is ready,
Looking mighty fine...
With her, life is heady
Roses, ***, and wine,
But still he's feeling low...
With him or not, her heart's not true,
And every man is game.
Always empty, wanting more,
She paws the door and wears the floor...
Faithlessness.
--------------------------------------
He­ hangs his head these lonely days
She's gone to greener grass,
Because his penchant kept his eyes
On making one more pass,
"A little candy before lunch,"
He liked to joke around,
No woman ever felt it safe,
To let her guarding down.
Meanwhile his wife waits up at home,
While he is working late.
So sadly married to a man who roams
Breaking vows and tempting fate.
=========================
He's tired and he's growing old
A little stooped and bent,
His hair's receding now, and gray,
His working days are almost spent,
And yet she knows he's done his best...
He's fought his battles, nearly lost a few,
But found his love held faithful, true,
And so she holds his hand and stays
Faithful to her man and loves him, too.
The comfort these two know in later days,
The quiet peace of coming home to stay,
Are interest and dividends,
The priceless benefits she pays...
Faithfulness.

At first light, Easter Sunday morning,
The lilies on my mother's table
Trumpet Resurrection.
Not far from me,
My father's ashes, cool now,
Begin their dusty settling,
While I contemplate
The Resurrection.

"Don't try heroic means!"
He'd tell us.
"I'm old ... used up."
He even told me once
That if we found him in a home,
Lost in a coma,
That I must smother him.
(I told him no.)

I know what he meant, though.
"Do not resuscitate!"
To him, and now to me,
Requested no annihilation,
But declared his hope of Resurrection...
The Savior's gentle nudge to bring
A glorious morning's waking
Other where:
Shedding worn old limbs,
Renewing battered heart,
Erasing a million sins,
Though long forgiven,
Still borne on earth -
Consequential scars
Of living.

Easter Sunday morning,
My father's death, still fresh,
Brings me to affirm,
Christ died for sinful men
So they might live again.

But at this moment the Messiah stands risen from the dead, the first one offered in the harvest of those who have died. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also came through a man. (I Corinthians 15:20-21)

db April 8, 2012

Hiro, the Kamikaze,
Happily lives just over the hill,
Sleeps every night quite calmly,
So proud of his never a ****...

Hiro, the Kamikaze,
Veteran flyer is he,
Flew back from 33 missions,
Dropped his payloads in the sea.

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

Stands a bull in the yard...
We can't help but know;
Changes the peace,
Adds trickles of fear...
Keep my head and my attitude down,
Posture my shoulders just so...
Gotta move careful and slow...
There's a bull in the yard.

Those who know cattle
Know something of fear
When a bull's on the loose...
We try to stay clear,
Keep an eye to the floor,
Keep an eye on the door.

There's a bull in the yard
Makes living here hard...
With an eye to escape
From the bull in the yard,
I measure the gate...
Can I leap it?
Can he?

Bull in the yard....

Write What You Know

I am standing in front of another creative writing class, and from my mouth, the mouth of all English teachers, comes, “Write what you know,” and the carefully tied fly whips itself out onto the surface of the classroom and lies there, waiting for a nibble or a strike. My students, fresh from fields and country roads and long hours alone on the prairies, stare back like ancient trout, converged at this bend in the river. No one moves a pencil; no one rises to even tap the bait. Silence is broken by the sound of the motorized General Electric clock over my head as it marks the flow of time and water and life.

Whoever put a 15 inch clock on the wall above and behind the teacher, knew something about sadism. Students mark their breathing in second hand sweeps, while I wait for that first hand to rise like a fish, foolishly deciding to catch one last fly for the evening…my fly, tied carefully to “invisible, mono-thread nylon leader” guaranteed to withstand the assault of five pound monster brown trout. Patiently, I stand by the edge of the stream, my feet just barely touching the water line.

“Mr. Bouchard? What if I don’t have anything to write about?” a querulous voice trembles. Shimmers of water-light ripple through the pond-room. I see the other trout-children moving ever so slightly, turning in the water thick air toward the question-tap.

“Patience,” I think…and clear my throat. “Good question,” I say. “What do you know that you would want to write about? What stories do you have to tell that others would like to hear?” I let the current move the fly a little deeper over the waiting trout.

And there I miss the first strike of the day.

“Nothing. I got nothing,” grumbles Charlie. “I don’t go nowhere. I don’t do nuthin’ but work and stay at home.”

“Yah. Pretty much says it all right there,” chimes in his best friend Tad. The other fish start to turn away from the prompt/bait. I can see they are thinking of going into deeper water.

Quickly, I change tactics. I turn and grab a broken piece of chalk…not much, but enough. I scratch out two words: ‘episodic memory.’ Turning to the class, I say quickly, “What do you remember about 9/11? Take a minute and think about 9/11. Where were you? What were you doing? Who was with you? What time of day was it? What did you feel?”

The class is interested in the bait change up. I can see their trout bodies, speckled with brown dots, turning toward my new presentation. Gills are fanning in and out a little quicker than before.

A hand shoots up. Mary says, “I was on my way to school, and the bus driver yelled at us all to be quiet because something was going on with World Trade Center.”
A couple of her friends nod their heads, eyes looking up and back, into the past. Images were coming into focus.

Jose blurts out, “My mom was on the way to New York that morning. She was waiting at the airport. We were all worried about her.”

Now we’re getting somewhere, I tell myself. “So, Jose, can you remember exactly what you were doing when you first found out about the planes hitting the building? Where were you? What were you doing?”

“I had just eaten…Cheerios…yeah, it was Cheerios!” he says. “I was making sure my books were in my backpack, and the news came on over the Good Morning Show. I remember I stopped and just stood there like I was frozen. It was a couple of hours before we knew she was okay, but her plane was grounded so she couldn’t go to New York.”

The rest of the class murmurs. The beautiful fish begin to move as one toward the bait.

I nudge. “What did you see? What did you hear? What did you feel? What did you smell? Who were you with? Take a minute and write that down.”

Pencils scratch on cheap paper. The sound of the clock hum recedes. Time slows as currents of thought push the humming motor down. The stream slows and the water surface becomes glassy.

Two minutes pass. No one says anything.

I break the silence. “This is episodic memory. When huge events take place in our lives…events that mean something very important to us, or that are swift and exciting, sometimes too wonderful or too terrible to understand or to survive…at that instant…those events are stored in our minds almost like living, high definition videos. We can remember these episodes with all five senses. We remember what we were doing, what we were eating, who was with us, where we were, sights, sounds, smells, feelings…they’re all there in our episodic memories.”

I have their attention. The hook is set. Some pencils even scratch “episodic memory” on paper. I push on.

“We all have collective episodic memory. 9/11 is a good example. You all have some collective memory of that day when terrorists flew two airplanes into the twin towers in New York City.”

I take a breath. “Now comes the reason for my teaching you about episodic memory. We all have personal events stored in episodic memory as well. Each of us has his or her personal memories, forever burned into the hard drives of our minds. When we pull up these memories, they are there in true color, full sound, and clear vision. We can see, taste, touch, hear and smell those memories clearly. That’s what I mean when I say, ‘write what you know.’

It’s illegal to fly fish with multiple baits on one line in Montana, not that I am coordinated enough to keep 15 grey wolf flies separate and in the air on the end of 30 feet of fly line anyway. In my mind, I imagine those flies stinging the water and 15 fish leaping to snag them. The class is moving mentally toward episodic events.

The fly fisherman lives for that leaping catch, when the world explodes with the splashing surge of trout beauty and fierce battle. The teacher lives and breathes the exhalations of “AHA!” as students capture concepts and come to life.

Fifteen memories, brilliant as shattering crystal catching sunlight, explode in fifteen minds…and then the trouble comes. I have been here before, and move quickly to head off a possible flight to deep waters.

“Class! I need you to hold your thoughts for just a minute.”

“Some of us in this room just experienced memories of wonderful events: winning shots at ball games, good news of brothers or sisters coming home from war, first kisses … and some of us are experiencing terrible events, reliving them over right here in this room. I know that happens. It happens to me. The problem is…not all episodic memories should be shared with everyone.”

The class is silent. A couple of eyes are red and I can see where tears are beginning to form. Someone is recalling a fumbled tackle and the agony of sounding jeers. Another is re-living the scratchy beard and beer-sour breath of a father as he crosses all lines of decency and honor with a child. I can almost hear the sounds of skidding tires and feel exploding airbags as three minds simultaneously re-experience crashes…. The silent sounds of slaps and screams, of joyous and sarcastic laughter, of shouts of tearful farewells and exuberant reunions fill the air, bubbles releasing in the moving water of the classroom.

And then, the bell rings. “Take your ideas with you and write about what you know! I’ll see you Wednesday,” I yell.

Fifty minutes. The fishing is good. I reel in the fly, check the hook, and wait for next fish to come downstream.

She sits there,
Fingers entwined,
Face showing her tangled mind.
"I don't know what to write,"
She states, and follows,
"I don't have anything interesting
To say."

I ask her what she loves...
Sometimes it's horses,
Sometimes law,
Sometimes children,
Sometimes God,
Sometimes....
Always
Something that she loves.

And when she talks,
Her eyes grow bright,
Revealing memories,
To be nudged and wheedled,
Poked a bit and needled,
To find that sliver and
Extract the thought
On which to write.

Then off she goes to compose,
To start a journey up the path
We both hope leads to a diploma,
A job, a career, an opportunity.

When she is gone, I sit and muse....
I am a father and grandfather now,
Still adjusting training wheels and
Giving that first push,
Still patching skinned up knees,
Pulling slivers...
Sending children on their way.

Nyla felt the heavy steps coming up the stoop
Before the muffled thud of snowy feet...
Hurried to the stove to check the roast,
Apron-wiped her brow from oven heat.

In from chores, her Hiram stood a little bowed,
"I'm worried 'bout Old Sol," was all he said,
"I know it's nearly April now, but still, somehow,
He's failing." In his voice she heard a quiet dread.

"I know he's getting old...nearing twenty-two."
Words came spilling out, and Nyla stood to hear,
"The cold is hard for him to take; I feel it, too,
And February was so long and cold and drear."

"The longer days still colder grow... are hard
On every living thing, except a dormant few.
Our flagging summer memories become marred;
Old horses and old men lose hopeful views."

"I'll go down with an extra scoop of oats,"
Old Hiram said. "Perhaps to cheer him up a bit."
Nyla didn't argue, turned down the stove,
Finished table chores, and found her place to sit.

In only minutes Nyla heard the slow footfall;
Asked, "Hiram?" then said nothing more.
No words were needed for she knew it all,
And held her husband close beside the kitchen door.

A sleepy rodent and an arrowed lover
Predict cold winter's tail is nearly past.

The Frost Lizard's cold and lifeless breath
Slithers January and February through,

But cannot muster up the frozen breath
To freeze the hibernal world to death.

We wait the moistening breath of Spring
Inside our hovels, here beneath the blowing snow.

Listening to the heavy moving thighs and trampling claws
Of a dying lizard, moving slow, but forced to go.

Truth starts with a capital T...
Makes up the rules...
Doesn't ask me?

What if truths I throw His way
Don't affect Truth with a capital T...
At the end of the road, the end of the day...
When Truth has His say?

Oh me.
Oh miserable me.

What if at the end of the road, at the end of the day,
Truth stands to ask what I've done...
My opinions don't count, with no other Way,
Oh won't that be fun at the end of my run?

Oh what will I say?
Oh what will I say?

What if I see Truth has a capital T,
If I listen to Truth to let it change me?
If at the end of the road, stands Truth as I've said,
Aligned with the Truth, I'll have nothing to dread.

Don't have to be rich
Don't have to be poor
Don't need a window
Don't need a door

To choose Life

Don't need to be fancy
Don't need to be plain
Don't need to be dry
Don't need to be rain

To choose Life

Don't need to be clumsy
Don't need to be handy
Don't need to be duncey
Don't need to be dandy

To choose Life

Don't need to be good
Don't need to be bad
Don't need to be Mom
Don't need to be Dad

To choose Life.

Don't need to go up
Don't need to go down
Don't need to smile
Don't need to frown

To choose Life.

If I choose Life
I'll know what to do
My Life-osophy guides me
Should always ring true

To Choose Life.....

Feel like dancing,
I.

If Dr. Who
Can
Boogaloo,
Then
So
Can
I.

Rose
Is
A
Rose
Is
A
Rose,
As
Dr. Who
Knows.

And dance on the bridge
Of the TARDIS,
They
Did.

Enough
Now
Of
Dooms
And
Emergency
Weathers....

We Dance
Hilarious
Dances
On the TARDIS
Bridge.

Tomorrows
We
Cannot
Imagine
Before
And
Yesterdays
Behind.

We
Pause
for
A
MO...

And
Just
Dance.

The refrigerator did it...

Results are in,
The crime is solved,
The botnet's done its ***** work;
The refrigerator has been caught
Just standing there,
But running just the same,
Cool as a cuc...
Never mind....

No appliance now is safe
Connected to the Net;
Programs roaming find some space
To pick up every megabit,
Conscripting all the little brains
Thinking on their own
To join together,
And while it's cooling Easter ham,
My fridge is on a mission now,
Releasing spores of spam.


(Check today's news...kind of frightening, but also funny.)

As I grow older, Melody, my only Love,
I remember young desire
And thank my only God above.

It was you who made me croon,
Paw the dirt,
Howl at the moon,
And burn.

So it is as we are growing old:
You light the fires
Deep within
And stoke the flames
We've long been in.

I would not have another,
Wife,
Though hard has been our
Life.
I find you everywhere,
It seems...
Asleep, awake, you're there,
Girl of my dreams.

Hill and fields people, these,
Gathering in their Sunday best
At a chapel in the valley'd hills
To sing God's praises acapella:
Women, cap'd  and apron'd,
Suspendered men in beards,
Children flushed from playing tag
Beneath the shade of dry land trees.

Paper fans wave off the heat;
Down runs the trickled sweat.
Melodious voices keep a beat,
To rhythms time cannot forget.

Gray and cracked old concrete floor,
Crude old splintering stage,
Modern luxury we need no more
To praise the God of Ages.

Four-part harmony
Sung sweet and clear
Fills the chest,
Swells the air,
Relieves the soul
Of earthly care.

These men,
These women,
Raise the paean
Of humbled hearts,
Of thriving souls,
To heaven.

A great and sprawling land, China.
I flew halfway 'round the globe
To find a vast conundrum:
Cities burgeoning,
Young and old
Spires of glass
Pillars of steel,
Empty or filled,
Roads new and old:
New Bentleys and Buicks,
Two cylindered trucks,
Three-wheeled taxis,
Bell ringing bicycles,
Wheelbarrows laden,
Grandmothers pushing carriages,
A million mopeds...
And everyone busy.

Ships at Qingdao,
Lovers on the boardwalks,
Blue-green glass touching the sky,
Reflecting the ocean.

Sidewalk musicians
Strum Chinese songs
'Neath kite-filled skies
Beside the spiraled Winds of Change.

Beijing, capitol and dragon-city,
Towers beside the ancient Wall,
Hosts the world,
Puts on her civil face,
Bows greetings to the fawning planet,
Eager to earn industrial favors.
She shrouds herself in smog,
Hides her slithering tail
Snaking world-ward over distant mountains.

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

Uneven is the change;
Wealth beyond imagination
Fuels the work of towering cranes
Pivoting above a poorer crowd's starvation...
A jet set crowd whose growing never wanes...
Economic challenge of the oldest of all nations.

Published today 14.12

Winter, now, from the upper pole
Turns back his face to close our warm escape,
While whistling low to minions cold
To curtain lands beneath his icy cape.

Green Summer's fled now, with her mentor,
Autumn, in a crisping coat of brown...
Fled southward to the vernal center;
While pale sister Spring cannot be found.

Unsettling old white-bearded man
Blowing icicles and snow,
Driving Seasons feminine
Before his storming blows.

Yet  for all his windy work, how well we know
Now gloaming sisters shall return,
For Spring shall ever end the snow;
Warm Summer's glow and Autumn's burn
Return, return, return, return.

Who thumps against me in the dark
And rings the jingles by the door
To let me know he has to *** a little after four,
Then barks at neighbors passing by
To let them know a guard is nigh?

Who chews my phone and my remote
And tears the pillow stuffings out,
Then wags his tail with sheepish smiles
And makes me laugh when I should pout?

Whose breath defeats my appetite
And slobber covers everything in sight
And pounces on our comfy bed at night
When I have snuggled in just right?

Tucker Freitas is his human name,
A wooly Labradoodle with no shame,
(We call the "grand-dog" to his face
But other things when in disgrace).

So would I have him any other way,
Say in a kennel or a fricassee,
Or stuffed and lying on a frame?
No, I will love him in his puppied self
Content to know he loves me as myself.

The company he gives is pure as gold,
His eager joy at seeing me is never old;
He's healthy and excited each time he hits my door,
Tongue hanging out and slobber flying,
Four feet sliding on the polished floor,
Remembering treats and wanting more.

We have known our share of grief,
Known love realized and unrequited,
Months cluttered into years,
Mused beyond the longing dreams.

I have known our sighing prayers,
Held your mom and gazed the mirrors
To see the man who wears my face
Change beneath time's weight,
Wondered at the lack of hair
(The little left now turning gray),
Contemplated whatever you might say
About our aging ways.

We are unable back to move
Those hands a perfect time to hold,
Are damaged goods ourselves,
Thankful for the good of healing grace,
Longing every hour of every day
To hold you close, to see your face.

Black dress,
Black lace shawl,
Red cherry violin,
Black frets and strings,
Black bow, white mane or tail,
Tensely poised
To move along the strings
In dances sensuously slow,
Tantalizing strings
To vibrations sublime,
Singing listeners to sway
Eyes closed, adrift, in
Streaming consciousness.

Other movements quick and sharp,
Impossible for any heavy-wielded harp,
Dancing pirouettes of sound,
Jetting needles sharp,
Then  reeling tremulous...
These caterwaulings of a horse's tail
Held tautly on a stick.

A deaf man here beside me,
Only seeing, reads about
The music that I hearing, feel...
Somehow feels the Muse,
Sways to the dancing bow.

The girls had just come in from gathering fuel,
Laid the frozen cow pats in the box
Beside the stove,
Went in to wash for supper.

The old house creaked beneath a towering wind
Gray-full of promise that driving snow was on the way,
But though it shook, the shingles stayed;
The smoldering fire warmed and cheered
The children as they stamped their feet to chase the cold away,
Hands outstretched to catch the radiant heat.

A distant cloud of war in Europe loomed,
Sinister, though far, the children vaguely knew,
By catching whispered grown up conversations....
Though not yet reality for German-Russian Mennonites
Now Montana farmers on the eastern plains
To which they'd run to find a peaceful space
To settle far from persecution.

Before the supper washing and the setting of the plates,
Grandmother moved to catch the evening news,
Turned a dial to set the tubes aglow
And warm the wireless magic in the radio.

Crackling to life, a man's voice said, "Achtung!"
Early winter, 1938 on Montana's wind-blown plains,
The evening news presented ******'s venomed speech
Declaring war and warnings and impending dooms.

Mesmerized, my German grandma stood,
Suddenly cold inside the warm kitchen,
Staring out the window toward the barn,
Tears running down her cheeks,
Her children gathered round.

"Mama! Mama! What is the matter?"
My mother begged to know,
tugged upon her mother's apron,
Wondered at the power of words
To make her mother cry.

"That man has terrible power!"
Was all my grandma said, trying to be calm,
Then turning back to ready table
Before the men came in for supper.

Seventy-five years later,
Sitting at the kitchen table on the farm,
My mother's voice trails off...
******, and her mother...
How many millions gone?

Powerful within the room,
The memory rests.
Outside, the same wind blows;
Only absent snow-gray clouds
Beneath the ice-blue skies.

Waking and sleeping our way
Past our losings of you,
Thinking you forgotten,
Ourselves we fool.

Proof lies in dreams now common:
Your brother sees you in one house and then another...
Happy times as though you've never left,
Your mother sees returned embraces,
Powerful reunions, tearful faces,
Embraces flee morning alarms....
Who knows the dreams to come?
My convolutions mix beyond my ken;
I have no will to stop them, else I lose all memory
Of your face, your happy laugh, or rebel yell;
Losing sight of children, a father's constant hell.

Weary days and dream-filled nights
Toss us as we pine,
A daughter and a sister lost,
An aunt that we can't find.
The past seems never far away
What can be done, we do...and pray.

The Autumn missal has arrived,
A fall reminder of the coming cold,
Strange slanting light to shift the maple
Greens to furious red and gold.

High above the myriad travelers chant adieu,
As on their sky-road paths they sing,
A chorus glorious to southern waters blue
Where winter marshes serve a warm retreat.

A liturgy of highest order drives the world
Beyond the ken of time-old cycles round;
Hibernal instinct now in feral life unfurls:
Flogs squirrels outward on their oak-corn bounds,
Plushes wealth of wolves' warm winter fur,
Hardens bone and antler, deepens feathered down,
Adds harvest fat to beast and fish and fowl,
Drives sap below old Frost's attempt to burrow down.

_____
Unspoken paen unheard by almost all,
A careless shivering passerby may dread
This ritual changing of the Fall,
But never mind, the liturgy is read,
And Nature safely tucks herself into her wintery bed.

Autumn Dancer

Of the four girls whose parents
Be the Year, Autumn spends
Her quarter round in changing clothes
And riots life even as she slows.

Protesting greens that fade and run,
She riots best against the sun
In reds and oranges and yellows;
In slanting light her dancing slows.

Weeks before her dance is done,
She pays her homage to the sun;
Her stepping slow; she dresses down
For waltzes sad in somber brown.

At curtain call, her early temper loses sway;
Refined before the end, she dresses for ballet
And pirouettes in faded brown
A shadow now in dying light.
She pirouettes in faded brown,
Beside a sister white.

We didn't have the pleasure of first meeting:
The get-to-know you touch of tiny hands,
The careful cradling,
The inhalation of all scents new,
The wonder of a being so tiny,
To see if we could find ourselves in you.

Never knew your sleepy sigh,
Your first smile,
The different infant cries:
Hunger, anger, fear,
Or the fidget-whimpering need for words.

Your Mother knew and told your Dad....
They held each other while you grew,
Gathering and stretching,
A silent wonder in her womb,
A sweet surprise, and wanted,
If still a little early...
Too early yet...
Better to wait and make sure....
But always you were awaited
With hopeful joy.

And then one morning,
As though you'd found a better place,
You took your leave in silence,
Left without a face or name
For us to see and know you
When we finally meet.

You need to know we mourn you,
Or perhaps we need you to know...
Regret your passing.

Strange longing this,
For a loved one we have yet to meet,
To add someone to the growing list
Of those we miss and long to see
At Jesus' feet.

----------

But Jesus said, "Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven."
Matthew 19:14

Published 9/2/13

How was it there in Isengard,
Former haven of the proud,
Whose hollowed valley hid the rot
Beneath its treeless hills,
Ancient machinations tunneled far below
The smooth, impervious tower of Saruman,
The Iridescent Dazzler,
Whose quiet words slipped Sauron's thoughts
Inside our weaker minds?

Venom running hot...then changing cold
Within old Saruman on Gandalf's salutation:
"Saruman the White,"
Changing Truth for truths,
Something totally desired.

"I prefer Saruman the White!"
I think old Gandalf said
While he was still "The Gray,"
(Just before his lofty spire stay).

But evil magic has its ends,
Tendrils turn upon themselves,
Vines tangling slow or fast,
Returning to the evil doer's door
While Good climbs steadily to new beginnings
Rooted in the Old and True,
Reaching for the sun.

Old Ents in righteous anger
Broke dams, diverted streams to flood
The war machines of Isengard,
Drove Orcs and Wargs and Trolls to doom,
Drowned the furnaces...
Then, mourning tree-limbed kin,
Greeted Gandalf on his way to greater things,
And pledged themselves to holy war.

Saruman the Proud,
The sooty iridescent,
The abject coward,
Stripped of power,
Fled unrepentant
Into the mists of Middle Earth
While Sauron's eye glared
West and East,
Wraith-seeking
Frodo and
The Ring.

When I heard the words that I had never hoped to hear,
"I'm on a path that you did not imagine,"
I trembled in the darkness growing near;
A green and deathly sickness grew within.

I can sense the Sirens' call to prayers unholy:
"Come dance the daring dances;
Sing the songs the sinners sing,
Defy the order of the stars to fling your flings,
And shake your ***** fists in pent-up rages,
Deny the structures of eternal ages;
Pervert the holy orders present at the birthing of the universe."

Does saying what is real is not or what is not is real
Change anything beyond the choice of action?
(Some would argue that the proof is in the consequence.)
Can mass opinion or the way a person feels
Change laws immutable: gravity's pull or magnetic attraction?
(Even theologians teeter now upon a wobbly fence).

If mass opinion moral laws can change
(Some critical percent of all believers
Taken in a poll believe the cannibals were right;
Please pass John's head there on that platter),
Then nothing stable really can exist.

When data-driven compasses redefine the laws,
When best practice comes from mass opinions,
We lose abilities to know ourselves as climbing up
Or scuttling down the ladders of Existence,
Confuse the benefits or dooms of consequential Ends.

Who faithfully waters flowers
In the too-small *** upon the stoop,
Blossoms smiling at morning sun,
No fear of nooning heat
Her ministrations prove that love
Transcends the tightness of their tiny space,
And so they bloom and glow.

Here's to the Man whose only Love
Anticipates his steps before sun-fall...
His only thoughts of coming home to her;
She is his haven 'gainst a solemn world;
This little house with flowers on the step
A place where love and blossoms grow.

(Alone, I wanted love, both to be and to do...
Creation is a dangerous fling when love is on the line.)

Wood carvers' magic lies
In the carving of their steel knives;
Sticks of wood and cotton strings
Give hardwood imitative lives.

Always, though, a thing is needed,
Or the living and the dead move only
In a dance surreal's reflection;
The dead must imitate the living.

Somehow string life is never quite enough;
True love must choose to stay...
To dance a half step slow or  quarter fast,
To jive against a jink and twirl an unexpected twirl.

And so I cried each night and prayed
For genuine, not wooden love,
And life arose in wooden hands;
Pinnochio was born, and stood

Wobbling on wooden feet, but living.
The joy I felt was full to see my son,
My own creation, moving on his own.
Then he, like any living boy, began to run.

Some say a loss is better if love comes first;
Some say it's better yet, to be alone.
I have seen both and can't determine which is best...
Pinnochio, Pinnochio, my wandering son,
Remember me, your father, and come home.