Approaching customs, my father slowed the car.
"Time to eat! he said, and pulled us to the side.
He'd bought peaches from a fruit stand,
Forgotten they'd never cross the border.

Never one to waste, his plan unfolded.
We stood beside the car, peach juice
Trickling down our arms,
Falling at our elbows,
Gorging a delicacy turned to glut,
Making memories of forced generosity,
Gluttons of fruit, victims of parsimony.

My mother knew what was coming:
The cramps we kids would have
From smuggling peaches
In stretched bellies
Into Canada.

He stands awkwardly
Barefoot on snow-packed sheets
After shuffling side to side
Beside his penguin bride
Across thick panes of ice,
Against the blowing snow...
Hesitates...
Suddenly he dives.

Wings spreading now,
He flies, awareness full
The sense of skimming beneath
Deep waves, unsinkable,
The call to move gracefully at will
Pulls the penguin down to dive
Through thick ice holes

He lives as though immortal:
No fear of sinking
Of freezing nor of dying...
Only the ecstasy of flying.

Floating above sea-graves deep;
Flying below the thinness of air,
This visitor to depths of blue,
Creature of air and light,
Escapes the wind and cold above
To fly in water.

When the clouds below turn to into carpet
Up there in the cold morning light,
The VFR pilot jitters and frets:

Time to check fuel, to come up with a plan
To search for a hole in the billow below,
And bring the craft in to land.

So it was when a pilot coming back from a lark,
Flew in a circle somewhere over Williston,
Above clouds turning thicker and dark.

In his office sat Phil, across the state line,
When the radio crackled, pleading a break:
"VFR practice," he thought, "He's probably fine."

Phil headed to lunch, had an errand to do...
Drove downtown for a couple of hours,
Returning somewhere around 2:00.

The radio tone carried tired despair
When Phil walked back in from his break
And heard the pilot, still stuck in the air.

Phil knew that the fuel must be drained
In the old Piper Cub overhead,
So he logged a flight plan and ran for his plane.

He flew to the east and banked to the north,
Rising above the gray carpet below,
And spotted the wanderer holding its course.

Coming in fast, cutting his distance by half,
"Super Cub over Williston, this is Bonanza
On your left. How much fuel do you have?"

"About 30 minutes," came a despondent reply,
Standard answer, but gauging the hours,
Phil calculated the response was a lie.

"I am going to fly by your side.
Follow me and dive when I dive;
Keep contact and enjoy the ride."

The planes in tandem turned around;
Phil flew by IFR to find the runway end,
Backed off the throttle, and led them down.

The tail dragger followed, did not complain,
Dropped into the soup gliding blind
Except for the strobe on the faster plane.

The old Cub flared when Phil said, "Land!"
Settled onto the runway end as the propeller stalled,
And Phil had saved a desperate man.

On the hangar wall now hangs a plaque,
Though Phil himself is gone,
The Governor's gift for bringing a flyer back.

--------------
My brother once watched Phil Petrik of Sidney Aviation fly off the Sidney runway, disappearing into a pea soup fog, carrying our father and mother on an emergency flight to Billings, to save my father's life.

I lay this poetic rose upon Phil's grave as a slim tribute to a man who earned my admiration and life long gratitude. Rest In Peace, Phil Petrik.

Ten O'Clock, day after tomorrow,
Henry Nilson's funeral's almost  here,
I hate to but I really have to go
Cause we've been friends for sixty years

Rode twelve years on the same old bus
Made memories by the dozens
Played sports, chased girls and learned to cuss,
Married sweethearts who were cousins....

Adjoining acres, ranched and farmed
Never had a fight or angry word,
Kept each other's backs from harm,
Old Henry's death just seems absurd.

Melva loved to worry on about the kids and weather
And when the television doctors said
"Go get a physical," she said, "We'd better!"
And then commenced the journey of the dead.

Old Henry'd never had a use for hospitals,
Said only sick people should go, and he'd
No time for such a waste of time at all...
Besides, he wasn't even sick, by gee.

But Melva kept the pressure up, and she
Though never tall, was never short with words
'Til poor ol' Henry finally gave in to her plea
And let her make a date with Dr. Wards.

He  grumbled to me afterwards, about the big to-do,
"They put me on a fast the day before, not even water!
Couldn't have a cup of joe, nor pinch of chew!
And when we got there, the nurse looked like our daughter!

Old Henry seldom saw the sun below his tee-shirt line,
So when she handed him a gown, he  struggled for a time
Before  he put the ****** thing on, "minus any clothes"
And wondered how to cinch it up...the fasteners  were  behind.

Old Dr. Ward gave cautious smile on entering the room,
"How long's it been, Mr. Nilson, since your last  physical?
I  don't have a record of your charts, so I assume
You've doctored elsewhere?" He looked up, quizzical.

Henry cleared his throat and said, "I ain't been anywhere!"
(At seventy, such a terse statement is something to be said.)
"Wal...that 'ent exactly true, I guess. There  was a couple times
I came for stitches or a broke arm"... his face was weathered red.

What happened  next, old Henry wouldn't speak a word...
Results were good, surprised the doc and Melva, too.
"You'll make a hundred at this rate," the doctor purred,
And  Henry saddled up and  left all in a stew.

A week or so went by, and Henry's medical triumph
Made the rounds of gossips in church and at the bar;
"A waste of time!" was all old Henry humphed.
And the next day, a heart attack took him in the car.

No moral now will end this sad old story,
No fancy shibboleths or speculation;
I notice though, the clinic's in less glory,
From physicals, I'm taking a vacation.

I grew up working the land,
Out under the sun,
In the wind,
Squinting in the semi-arid dust
Of our farm.

My sister lived inside,
Learning to cook,
To clean,
To live the farm wife's life.

We both live now in cities
A thousand miles from that old farm,
Visiting a week or two....
Never long.

Our recollections vary.
I suppose they must.
So when we walk a country road
We see things differently.

She sees flowers and rolling hills,
Grasses bowing gracefully in the breeze,
Dusty agates hiding patterns.

I see dust upon the flowers and grass,
I curse the way days pass
In wind and heat and cold
Turning living creatures old.

Hard the stones,
Sharp the thistles,
Bent the curling flowers,
Wind-rutted the hills
By wind and water powers.

I am tempered in my sister's pondering,
Pause in my cynicism.

She holds an agate to the light,
Turning it angle to angle
Seeing Beauty glow inside.

I have danced on the strings
Of another's desires;
I have pirouetted gracefully
To the swaying pull,
To the sudden release
From above,
But never from love.

I have stumbled and bumbled
In another's uncertainty;
Then, behind a painted smile,
Straightened and bowed,
On invisible strings
To an admiring crowd.

I have hung on the back
Of a dressing room door,
Strings looped carefully
Up on a hook, waiting alone
In suspense...
In the dark.

Plagium

"There! See that lad beside the stall?"
The master pointed straight his riding quirt,
"The little lad with the home-made ball?"

I nodded, weary, standing slouched, inert.

"We'll make him ours before the day is done,"
I heard his lordship gloat, and wished myself away,
Remembering the day the plaga caught me as I tried to run.

No use to tell him what I thought - no use to even pray.

And so we lured the boy to see a novelty just up the street,
And cast our nets about him and rolled him in the dust
Into a rug and carried him out, bound hands and feet...

Another slave boy in the master's house who cries at dusk,

Missing home and mother's arms and small delights;
His homely past an awful ache, though low and poor,
A place of love and hope and soft, familial sights

My slaving Master Plagiarus ripped away forevermore.

Plato, Socrates, Glaucon
sat and talked
about a chair and bed,
Discussing
What was real and
Was not.

"The originals
Are safe
With
God."

"Anything after's
Imitation;
The Carpenter
Creates a representation
Of the Real
But never duplicates,
And in some way
Honors the Original."

"The problem lies
With poets whose ideas stray
In artful Imitation,
Sort of a third-hand
Bit of Gossip
About Truth."

"In a perfect world,
Original thoughts
Exist only the mind of God
And artisans create
One-off visions of
The Prime."

"To stay near Truth,
Let's banish poets
And their poems
And create the
Ideal Republic."

then ee cummings
sauntered in -
said - boys
i see a universe
next door
Lets g o o o o!

Glaucon shook his head,
Took *******'s arm
And followed Dada
Off the stage.

Dad gave us pliers and their holsters --
Said, "Wear them when you come outside."

At nine and ten, we carried them,
Entering the world of working men.

I wore out pliers and holsters,
Bought new ones and wore out them.

Now several sets reside in treasured spaces,
In boxes and vehicles and other places.

These days seldom used, my pliers remind me
Of my growing up, of everything behind me.

I remember reading
Martin Luther King, Jr's
Letter from Birmingham Jail
Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom
Mark Twain's Huck Finn
DuBois' Souls of Black Folk,
Adichie's The Thing Around Your Neck,
Sherman Alexie's Part-time Indian tale....
For the first time

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

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

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

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

I have studied
Moses
Job
David
Ruth
Esther
Isaiah
Jeremiah
The Disciples
Paul
and James
(Ironically,
Since Jesus is the "Word,"
Through men He penned).

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

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

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

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

The list goes on and on, and will, I'm sure, expand beyond capacity.

Some would burn the home
To end the vipers lurking in the walls;
Take no care for ruining their shelter,
Panicking and distraught, destroying helter-skelter.

Some would attempt to live in peace
While the lurker steals their sleep.
Thinking vipers are just natural things,
Allowing them to rule their lives like kings.

Some would study the serpents to know
Where they hide; where they go...
Then **** them when they leave their lair,
And plug the villains' holes.

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.

Received a letter via
Our snow-covered mail box
Just a hundred steps from my front door.

Rather than the quick work of electrons,
My mother's friend
Had carefully penned
Her thoughts.

Two tight pages
In black ink:
Questions about life,
The kids and grand kids,
Whether we were getting rest,
And how was the snow?

Paper and ink
Envelope tucked,
Cancelled stamp,
Delivered after a thousand mile ride,
Lies on my desk,
Proof of my mother's love.

Mainly, she was concerned
That we were finding time to live,

And were we still thinking about her?

In March, she pushed a shining black calf
Into the world, and watched as it staggered
To wobbling legs waiting for her to rise.

She couldn't.
Pinched nerves,
Calving paralysis,
Unable to rise.

My brother and his wife
Bottle fed the calf for several weeks,
Waiting for a miracle,
For which the two had prayed,
And then one day the mother stood
Weak, shaking, but on the mend.

A couple weeks more,
And she was down again,
Stuck in front of the barn
With barely an appetite,
Drinking water from a bucket,
Resting upright in her own mess.

The calf was doing fine.

June 1 came, and field work to do,
My brother, ever patient, could wait no more.
Loaded his old 30-30 and headed to the barn.

He scratched the cow's forehead,
Told her she had been a good bossy,
And that he was sorry, and then looked at her.
He turned and emptied the rifle on the way to the house.

"Lord, it would sure do me a favor
If you were just to take her
So I wouldn't have to shoot her."

He returned to the barn and hayed the bulls.
On his way back to the water tank, he stopped
By his old friend and looked at her.

The cow raised her head,
And while my brother watched,
Her  eyes rolled up and back.
She sighed deeply, and then her head
Sagged down and she was gone.

He called me shortly after,
Still a little bit in awe,
A little bit in pain,
Glad to have me listen,
Though both our mouths were dumb
At the way God's prayers are answered,
And the ways His answers come.

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?

We are the Protestant Proletariat
Our revolution is to divide
En masse by fit or fad
To tear down monuments
Destroy traditions
Install new leaders
And vote them down

An unchanging God
We celebrate in changing ways
We leave the old behind
Celebrate we no high masses
Except to exit or to enter
Events and fads and ideologies
We term “movements”

Celebrate we no liturgies
All things new are we
No paean or hymn
We leave untouched
But change the tune
Update the words
To fit the current thought

No vaulted ceilings
Nor Gothic spires we claim
Our sanctuary ceilings are low
Our ceremonies are low
No High Church are we
Protestants have earned a name
And never can remain the same.

Never
Is the Vine
Closer to the Vintner
Than during
Pruning.

Puget Sound in Fog
Flag drooping, wet, barely moving,
Tide out past the buoys;
The boat tipped,
Waiting water.

Drizzling mist of fog descending
No horizon but the pebbled sand
Herons move grayly in slack water
Hunting fish.

Ragged shoreline stretches to invisibility,
Battered logs, shells, a trillion broken things
Rest in exhaustion, uncaring,
Responding to unceasing chaos.

Tides rising,
Tides falling,
Delivering,
Destroying,
Grinding,
Removing,
Renewing,
Mo­ving to the pull
of earth
and moon
and universe.

He was five or six when he first challenged her
To play a game of checkers.
Fresh-faced and eager from battles with friends,
Young master of jumping and double-jumping,
Connoisseur of cornering and kinging.
Ready to wreak havoc on his grandmother,
A simple farm wife, unskilled in the battle of the board.

He didn't contemplate that the checker set
In the old farm house was hers....

Their battles raged,
Sometimes every day,
With, "Want to play again?"
His constant question.

I would watch her lose,
Seeing what my little boy,
The often conqueror,
Could not see in victorious glee.

Twenty-five years later,
We sit again at the old farm table,
And the two are pitted in their checkers game;
The same, but wearied box waiting
While the battle rages on the old scarred board.

Her hand, uncertain, moves the pieces slowly
As though she is off somewhere thinking,
And he, now patient, waits in a treasured time,
For her to contemplate and make her moves.

He is twenty-nine, and she is eighty-nine,
And though the opportunities rise,
Through my misty eyes,
I see my son, pulling punches.

When you run across a "which,"
Put a comma in the ditch.

At 82, he rises early, hurries to the barn
As fast as he can go, and at his age,
The shambling gait looks like a run.

"Retire?" I asked just once.
"Die in my boots," said he,
"Or hanging in a fence."

"Vacation?" his foolish son inquired.
"Each morning standing at the gate,
To see the sunrise is my vacation!" his reply.

"Rest?" I still must ask.
"I'll sleep when I am dead!"
How many times I've heard this?
I don't know.

I come, a tourist, to the farm I once called home,
The place he never left...will never leave.
Some day we'll find him, hanging in a fence,
Or stuck and cold in a snowy ditch,
Out on the fields or pastures that he loves.

No matter that my mother waits as always,
Looking out at distances,
At some late hour,
Wondering where her man is, and
Holding dinner warming on the stove.

Two lives inseparable in life, but winding down.

I drove four miles this evening
Down the road to see the miracle
Of pastures greening.

They'd come to life this Spring
To lick the rivulets of melting snow,
Lichens before wild grasses, glistening,
But then a blistering summer blow
Came to patch their roots.

Just last week a quarter inch of wet
Fell from a Treasury on high
To tell the famished carpet,
"Wait a while! Storm clouds are nigh!"

And yesterday a full wet inch
Of heaven's grace and mercy flowed
From the billowed Throne's high bench
To rally grassy supplicants to grow.

A good day
For worm travel...
And bird feasting.

I am dressed gray,
Walking in clouds.

Vapors cool
Fog my vision,
Slow my journey
Through moods of contemplation.

Yet, there's Life here,
If I can slow
My splashing rush
To let the dampness sprout.

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

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

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

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

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

The stalling plane fell,
A toy, yawing back on its tail,
Tilting left and down
And down.

The boy’s dad at the stick,
Frozen,
Face immobile,
Almost careless as they fell;
He, his mother, and his father,
And a stranger, next to him,
Tumbling above Montana
Prairie hills surging
Nearer
And nearer.

The stranger clenched the boy;
The tail dragger impacted a rising knoll.
The engine clanged and broke,
Dirt enveloped the shattered cabin.

Silence smothered cacophony.

Conscious of being dragged
Through a **** in the fuselage
Out into open air,
The boy saw little,
Couldn't make out the stranger's face.

His mother came through the side of the plane
A Cesarean section, reversed,
The boy's hope reborn
At the emergence of his mother.

She appeared dazed,
He thought, unruffled,
Dusty with a smearing of bright red lipstick
Stretching up from the corner of her mouth
To the edges of her right ear.

The boy knew it must be blood.

His father lay,
Crumpled oddly,
Head twisted between
Stick and dashboard;
Right arm somehow
Lolling through the fuselage.

Blood smeared the arm, the head.
Everything still,
Motion slow...
Echoes.

The stranger moved on hands and knees,
Inspected the boy
His mother,
Pulled them away
From wreckage,
Surveyed the scene.

Turning then to the man
Twisted and still,
Grotesque within the shell,
The stranger gazed.

Gasping,  the boy jolted.
Saw,
Thought he saw,
His father’s hand ****,
Move up and backward to his face.

The boy heard,
Thought he heard,
His father sigh.

Fear surging
The son,
Caught in a wave,
Realized his first response,
Horror,
A sense of ******* returning,
Having glimpsed,
If only for a few seconds,
Freedom.

He had no idea if he would...
If he could actually do it...
When the time came,
When his sergeant gave the nod,
Let slip the dogs of war,
Unleash the copper bees,
Send missiles hurtling up or down
At targets moving now...
On men who may be wondering
If they could fire the same,
When the time came....

"Steady, men!"
"On my command."

He lay there,
On a roof,
In a ditch,
On an open field,
Crouched inside a turret,
Bellied down in a plexiglass ball,
Hurtled above a world mostly covered in cloud,
Standing far below the earth in silo'd steel,
Seeing still, through satellite eyes....

Peered into the mil dot scope,
Ignored the cross
To see through the center,
Found the circled aperture,
Punched coordinates into a seeing machine,
Saw green circles on the screen...
Aligned the circles....
Tried to breathe.

So that was how it was
For farm boys, Mowers of hay,
Grocers' sons, smashers of ants,
Carpenters, hammerers of nails,
And bakers' boys, cutters of bread,
Just in from shooting marbles and BB guns,
Transported into war,
Fed soldiers' ration:
meat and bread and beans,
Five cigarettes apiece in boxed MREs,
Sent off to **** and to be killed
With mothers' tears still fresh upon their cheeks,
With lovers' ache still glowing embered heat.

Training fresh,
Waiting command
To fire only when the order came...
To remain firing til the order came...
To hold the breath and squeeze...
To hold the sight just so...
To squeeze...
And to reload
Keeping head low,
Eyes on target...
To ignore all but the sergeant's yell,
To think of squeezing on new targets,
To wait awhile to process coming hell....

And when the time came,
He squeezed,
Felt the sudden life,
Heard little but the sound of
Clean ejection ...
Saw his bullet,
Saw his missile,
Saw his target meet,
And in the meeting,
Red,
And in the meeting ,
Fire and smoke,
And in the meeting
Knew  that he could do
What soldiers do.

This boy
Now cutting hay,
Now stomping ants,
Hammering nails,
Cutting loaves of cooling bread...
Caught in the maelstrom of war
With no moment left but now,
No possible tomorrow...
Only targets,
Only targeted
In ferocious winds
Of battle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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....

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 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....

"As I Stand on the Threshold"
is real,
is honest,
is every person's experience
before stepping free of scaffolds,
before learning to soar.

I can remember those same fears
on the marge of marriage,
on the receipt of my teaching license,
on the induction into leadership,
on the arrival of pregnancy,
on the realization that my parents were gone,
and that when voices asked for advice,
the eyes were looking to me....

All will be well.

I am smiling at your thought that the Apple Picker
has nearly died from standing on that ladder,
From hearing rumbling apples falling into the bins...

I have worked that hard as well, and I didn't die.

When a person works all day, standing on a ladder,
Or holding a paint brush, or swinging a hammer,
Or driving a tractor or truck, or shoveling manure....

You get the picture....

Yes, we grow blisters. Yes, we are exhausted.
Yes, we would rather be lounging on a beach
Almost anywhere else in the world...,

But the truth is this: After a long day's hard work,
Food fills most excellently,
The shower? The shower is the best shower ever,
And the sleep? The sleep is the sleep of the dead,
Dreamless, full of rest....

I sit eyes closed at the top of the wood
Desiring action, but in a dream,
Hooked head and feet immobile:
Near sleep of age, incapable to eat.

Necessity finds the highest trees....
Branches shake in sun-beaten ire;
No advantage find I in the moving air
While earth's face beckons me to fall.

Clenching now, claws deep in bark,
Creation's masterpieces find decay
Of foot and feather, come from dust,
This Creature must return to clay.

Vision strong still seeks resolve
As Earth below me still revolves,
Inward focus, resolute, admits
Tearing heads is now a chore.

Death's wind, inevitable, a chilling fact:
Who kills to live through victims' lives,
Though early arguments remain intact,
At twilight's call, they still must die.

From the West the same Sun sees me;
Only I have changed, and have grown thin,
And though my heart's set upon its path,
I've lost the strength to fly again.

Brahma
BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON
If the red slayer think he slays,
      Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
      I keep, and pass, and turn again.

Far or forgot to me is near;
      Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished gods to me appear;
      And one to me are shame and fame.

They reckon ill who leave me out;
      When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
      I am the hymn the Brahmin sings.

The strong gods pine for my abode,
      And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
      Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.

To all of us:

Those for peace and those who war,
The healthy and the ill,
The satisfied and those who beg for more,
The pauper and the millionaire,
The valley folk and hill,
The ****** and the *******,
The husband and the John,
The mother and the father,
The daughter and the son,
The rake and lonely celibate,
The lion and the lamb,
The quiet and the loud...
Some day will reach the quest...
Rest will come to all of us
Somewhere between the cradle
And the shroud.

We pray to align our minds to the mind of God
We read the Word to renew our minds;
The Word changes us,
Never the reverse.

Change the Infinite?
We cannot.

Manipulate the Almighty?
Impossible.

Make the straight our crooked path?
Inconceivable.

Creation cannot become Creator;
Though it bear His Image,
It is merely mirror,
Never Light.

Servants are we,
Never Master.

This the Way.

(This poem posted in tribute to the life &memory; of Robin Williams...Rest in Peace)

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
'Good-morning,' and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich - yes, richer than a king -
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
(Edwin Arlington Robinson)

Calling Spring North,
Chirping buds to burgeon,
Teetering in rain that turns to sleet,
Clutching black, wet branches,
Feathers puffed against the chill,
Cocked heads seeking sleepy worms,
Side glancing carefully the neighbor's cat.

These red-breasted birds
Chortling in the morning sun
Precurse Spring,
Sing cheer to me.

Though I, no longer young,
My Autumn just begun,
Winter coming on,
Life's seasons only last a while.

I have a Savior,
Who has gone before,
Endured cold Winter's death,
Calls me to Spring,
Beckons me to Summer....

Roll on the throttle
Spare no horses
Let the wheels spin
And miles roll by.
Today's sun shines
Only a few hours,
And then night falls.

Roll on the throttle;
Streak the fields by;
Chase the golden sun
Set high in sky so blue.
Forever only lasts
This single day
Before the light goes down.

Roll on the throttle
Listen to the road;
Listen to the wind;
Listen to the roar.
In light and air like this
We cannot ask for more.

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

You cooked every meal on time,
Served lunches exactly
When the hands aligned.
At the stroke of noon.

You drove "flagger,"
Moving trucks and tractors
From field to field,
Raised two boys and two girls...
Buried one in shock and disbelief;
And then moved on.

I know your secret.

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

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

Ahhh.
The stolen moments!
The bliss of passion!
Handsome strangers ready
To rescue you from wind-blown land.

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

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

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

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

I know your secret.

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

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

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

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

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

Who is he,
The man in the sweaty tee-shirt,
Standing in the center
While cars **** round
The roundabout?

He holds a digging tool,
Remains of weeds clinging.
He waves at a city parks truck
Rounding on its way
To the main building.

I know him.
We taught together once.
His doctorate in ministry:
Servant lives and how to lead them;
Mine in words and letters,
And how to read them.

I wonder as I drive away:
The tenuous lives we lead;
No predicting whether next year
I'll be learning with students
Or pulling weeds on a highway.

Vicissitudes of Life...

The Author,
Having said
What is to Say,
Submits the Text
And Steps Away...

What's to be Read
Or Heard
Or Seen
Is Said and Done.

Then Comes the Fun.

The Reader
Ambles In shuffling,
Struggles In fighting,
Bumbles In stumbling,
Forges In determining,
Skates In gliding,
Rides In on a horse named Fluency.


The Reader wears the Text:
Tries it on for size,
Shrugs before Self's Mirror,
Stretches,
Shrinks,
Dyes,
Preens,
Thinks s/he sees the Whole,
But cannot even see the back
For lack of some connection,
Then ambles off to share
The Text with others.

Later, at the Readers' Circle,
Each wearer of the Text,
Each Poem Creator/Holder
Whose individual Poems differ
After putting on the Text,
Compare.
And though they twirl and dance,
Though they stretch and pose,
Though they must adjust,
No one wears the Text
The Same.

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

I stopped to check my sense of what I had just heard...
Was transported to a prairie farm;
Thought of my Father, then in his eighties
Who felt no need and no sense of loss
For not having read Shakespeare nor Kant
For missing Milton's Paradises and Hemingway,
For by-passing Black Elk Speaks and C.S. Lewis.

Every morning, he read his Bible;
Some nights he read 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'd shout when I suggested a novel.
What literature he had was 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
("Storm's coming, boys! Let's get that hay!");
Cows and calves and bulls,
(Which one was sick or well, dry or bred);
Ways to diagnose mechanical ailments
("Start with the easiest options first");
Metals, to know which welding rod applied
("Aluminum sags, and cast iron cracks");
Grain, rolled crisp between hard hands,
(a test of ripeness);
Cement, to blend the perfect mix,
("Clean gravel/sand, no dirt, not too much water!);
Conservation,
("Always keep some grain on hand" &  
"Keep your fuel above half-tank").

So many literacies...
Dad, the Master Reader of them all...
No wonder he'd no time for books.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Reader
Experiences Text:
Tastes the corners,
Chews the middles,
Examines the ideas,
Turns them over and over -
Lozenges to be mulled.

Unique to each Reader
The Text must pass
Each Reader's senses:
His eyes,
Her nose,
Their tongues...
And so begins Digestion,
A complicated process producing
pleasant dreams in one,
Nightmares in another.
Soothing sleep for me
Dyspepsia for you.

Ideas have their routes to pass;
The dross is left behind or lost
And what remains is fiber to our souls
(To steal Walt Whitman's term).

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.