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.

A farm screen door latch
Should slam with the urgent drumming
Of a man or woman going off
On urgent business:
To see the cattle fed,
To till the fields,
To clang the dinner bell...
Should sing relentless songs,
Not stand and wait for days...
Sagging as the hinges sag,
Lonely in waiting ones who've left,
Forgetting to come back.

A door is meant
For entering and departing,
Handles on both sides.

A house that sees
no leavings nor returnings
Is kindred to coffins,
No longer home....

Secrets To My Brother's Farm

"Before you run off to the chores,
I have a secret you must learn,"
And so the messages are passed
On how to operate this tractor or that truck,
Which I, the visitor, must discern.

"This tractor's clutch will soon go out,
Unless you heed these words,
Keep rpm just high enough, but not too much...
Idle her down before you slip the clutch."

"The key won't work in the old pickup,
Just pull the **** there on the dash,
Then give the coat hanger wire a pull
until the engine fires...oh...did you check the tires?"

"Oh, while we're at it, see that old truck?
It doesn't like to start on the first try
So turn it over a couple times for luck
And then she'll start and never die."

"The air compressor switch is gone,
so plug it in to make it go, but first
Be sure to drain the tank, or it won't run,
The motor's tired and and has to have an easy start."

"The tires on the trailer need more air,
Especially the left one in the back,
Slow leak is all it is, but if it goes,
A newer tube's up on the rack."

"The loader's got a special wire
That you must clip to start the alternator charging,
(And if you ever do forget, the ire
You'll feel when the wires start burning.")

"This cow's alright, but don't forget,
To feed her last in her own bunk;
She likes to fight, and we'll need the vet,
If others crowd her to a funk."

"Don't lean on that, or you'll get hurt;
I've meant all spring to nail it."

"The handle broke, so you have to get out
By rolling down the window."

"Watch out! The guard is off that thing;
It'll take your arm just quick!"

"Be sure to shut the gas valve off,
Or it'll drain out on the ground."

"No brakes, so drive her carefully.
Keep it in a lower gear,
But if need be,
Hit something cheap."

"Two scoops only is the limit
You'll make her sick with more."

"Be sure to double-wire the gate;
The cattle will get out."

"We save the egg shells for the garden;
We never throw away what we could use."

So many secrets to remember,
I sure could use a list.
What do I get when I suggest?
A look equivalent to a hiss.

When Technology died,
some of us merely shrugged and
Tried to go back to before...

Only it wasn't the same...
So many hard-wirings gone,
So many places where we used to go,
So many thoughts we used to know,
Forgotten in an ethereal swirl...
Internetted and forgotten.
Power plants done, and no more juice
To feed along the sagging wires.

Once the Internet went down,
(Without so much as a diminishing blip
Of dying light (cathodes were gone)),
Ah, Lord, we missed the ethereal glow...
Screens now dead and flat,
Unable even to reminisce
The comfort-glow of former irritants,
The fuzziness 0f electronic snow....

And telephones! My Lord!
To think of how we used to talk!
Electronic prayers, each other we implored...
So much connected,
We forgot the depths of face to face,
Now cellular paperweights lie dormant,
Longing for at least a little life,
Reminding us those days are gone.

We pass our little news
Word of mouth now,
Word of mouth to ear,
Only if the ones
We want to know are near.

Before the sun
With his bright face
Puts angles on the shade,
Before old darkness slinks into his place,
I leave the house...
This morning off to work,
But slowing in my run,
I lean to see....

East and high above, a shypoke pair
Take leisure in their flight,
Wings creaking prehistoric,
Feet streaming back on boney stalks,
A trailing nuisance in the air,
Yet perfect for deep water walks.

The chilly air is still;
Dew hovers on the edge
Of giving up on hesitating summer.
Winter is not yet so far away
That crystal forms
Have been forgotten.

Dogwood, leafless yet, and bleeding red,
Begins to glow along the path
The joggers take before the morning sun.

The early light is best
To seek perspective on the world
Before the morning paper,
Before the morning cup;
The early light is best,
As long as we are up.

I should be outside...
Trees are thinking steady now
Of pushing leaves through
Woody fingertips.

I should be outside...
Geese are guarding eggs...
Golden yolks inside the round
Arrays of speckled grey.

I should be outside...
Foolish grasses wave tender flags
To call my snorting lawnmower
From its winter shed.
(El Toro is its name).

I should be outside...
But no...
I am crunching numbers,
Statistics' slave to keys
Whose metallic smells
Recite the probabilities
Existent in Fra Dante's hells...
Shall I abandon hope if I press "enter"?
Statistic hell is found at data's center.

I should be outside....
The sun is going down;
Night birds are trading calls...
The greebing screech of night hawks'
Wing-air brakes now haw and swoop
Their practicing 'til bugs arrive....

I should be outside...
Forget this chore.
I'm going out.
Tomorrow is another day.
I'm going out to play
OUTSIDE.

Two Christmases ago,
Morning cold hovers in electrons.
Frost covers the Chevrolet
Backed by whiteness
Under zero degree sunlight
The old farm place sees morning
Bright and calm....

The ancient barn,
**** frosted roof agleam,
Stands downhill to the north,
Below a curving tractor trail
Cut in the snow...

At the other end of those tracks,
Eighty-one and counting,
You are crawling down
the tractor steps,
Pulling battered buckets
from the ancient fodder shack,
Hobbling to the cattle troughs...
Doing what you love to do...
Have done for fifty years....

I am taking pictures at the house,
Amazed at the cold and frost;
An onlooker now,
Somehow aware that I can not
Follow you...or won't,
Wistful still for attentions
you always freely gave
To kine instead of kin.

Could I go back,
Would I go down
To trough the feed?
I tell myself I would,
Or I would not.

The image burns coldly,
Electrically before me,
And only vaguely I'm aware
That you have slipped away.

at the oddest moments
just at the brink of ennui
glimmers of eternity
ephemeral dancing joys
sideways slippings
just out of sight
moving fast
detectable
to the desiring ear...
to the attentive eye...
faint sighings
murmuring laughter
patter pit of little feet
contented laying of jowls
in a dabble of sunlight
carpet warm stretchings
closing of contented eyes
soft dog snores
laconic life in the moment
this Sunday afternoon....

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