"wagons" poems
824
[first version]
The Wind begun to knead the Grass—
As Women do a Dough—
He flung a Hand full at the Plain—
A Hand full at the Sky—
The Leaves unhooked themselves from Trees—
And started all abroad—
The Dust did scoop itself like Hands—
And throw away the Road—
The Wagons—quickened on the Street—
The Thunders gossiped low—
The Lightning showed a Yellow Head—
And then a livid Toe—
The Birds put up the Bars to Nests—
The Cattle flung to Barns—
Then came one drop of Giant Rain—
And then, as if the Hands
That held the Dams—had parted hold—
The Waters Wrecked the Sky—
But overlooked my Father’s House—
Just Quartering a Tree—
[second version]
The Wind begun to rock the Grass
With threatening Tunes and low—
He threw a Menace at the Earth—
A Menace at the Sky.
The Leaves unhooked themselves from Trees—
And started all abroad
The Dust did scoop itself like Hands
And threw away the Road.
The Wagons quickened on the Streets
The Thunder hurried slow—
The Lightning showed a Yellow Beak
And then a livid Claw.
The Birds put up the Bars to Nests—
The Cattle fled to Barns—
There came one drop of Giant Rain
And then as if the Hands
That held the Dams had parted hold
The Waters Wrecked the Sky,
But overlooked my Father’s House—
Just quartering a Tree—
19.1k
Eve of Holi
A spring eve that’s all different from others
Zephyrs blowing away the leaves
Orange sky adding the flavours
Blooming flowers nodding in a rhythm
So Ironical is nature of this evening
That all these beauties act as ornaments of Kali
On a normal evening man would work
They would work appraising weather
They know it will not last long, they enjoy
Today they as if ignore it, of morning celebrations
Morning is gayest morning of the year
Every reason to see every man
Mankind being unanimous
Evening on contrary balancing it to a usual day
An unexplainable soundlessness, vacuum of thoughts
A day depicting environment without men on work
Streets still hold colours on their chest
But this colour no more is a sign of happiness
People meet each other, everyone has a smile
But that doesn’t match with nature suit
There smiles have scope within its sight
Body of people walking on street enjoy zephyr
Their mind stay startled of unusual quietness
Standing on my entrance, I observe
A swinging litchi tree, missing sound of saw mill
Smiling flowers, orange cloudy sky
Empty streets, parked wagons, and utterly silence
Aug 8, 2014
Aug 8, 2014 at 4:09 PM UTC
Society has good intentions Bureaucracy is like a friend
5 years ago - other furies other losses -
America's
trying to control the uncontrollable Forest fires, Vice
The essential smile In the essential sleep Of the children Of the essential mind
I'm
all thru playing the American
Now I'm going to live a good quiet life
The
world should be built for foot walkers
Oily
rivers Of spiney Nevady
I
am Jake Cake
Rake
Write like Blake
The
horse is not pleased Sight of his
gorgeous finery
in the dust Its silken
nostrils
did disgust
Cats
arent kind Kiddies anent sweet
April
in Nevada - Investigating Dismal Cheyenne Where the war parties
In fields
of straw
Aimed over oxen At Indian Chiefs
In wild headdress Pouring thru
the gap
In Wyoming plain
To make the settlers
Eat more dust than dust
was eaten In the States From East at Seacoast Where wagons made up To dreadful
Plains
Of clazer vup
Saltry
settlers
Anxious to ********** The Mongol Sea (I'm too tired in Cheyenne -
No sleep in 4 nights now, & 2 to go)
9.1k
IN the night, when the sea-winds take the city in their arms,
And cool the loud streets that kept their dust noon and afternoon;
In the night, when the sea-birds call to the lights of the city,
The lights that cut on the skyline their name of a city;
In the night, when the trains and wagons start from a long way off
For the city where the people ask bread and want letters;
In the night the city lives too-the day is not all.
In the night there are dancers dancing and singers singing,
And the sailors and soldiers look for numbers on doors.
In the night the sea-winds take the city in their arms.
6.3k
Hope that you may understand!
What can books of men that wive
In a dragon-guarded land,
Paintings of the dolphin-drawn
Sea-nymphs in their pearly wagons
Do, but awake a hope to live
That had gone
With the dragons?
5.7k
They gathered by Williamson Road at sun-up
from neighboring spreads across the Tioga valley.
They came with carts laden with lumber stacks -
with saws, adzes, hammers and sundry tools.
They gathered with the homesteaders bond.
to co-build their neighbor's' dreams.
Sweet music of community echoed off the hills.
Chisels clanged into rock, shaping the foundation,
saws sang into boards to frame a timbered skeleton.
The staccato syncopation of hammers fastened walls
that soon would shelter plowshares, stock and grain.
A smithy leaned over his fire and forge -
chiming iron into sturdy latches and hinges.
Children scurried about mixing squeals and laughter
with exuberant fetching and lifting whenever called.
In two short passings of the sun the deed was done
and a handsome new barn, decked out in a wash of red
was silhouetted tall and proud against the fading light.
Homesteaders gathered at a celebration table
to share a hearty meal adorned by the music
of fiddles, grateful smiles and easy laughter.
Then one by one they steered their wagons home
gazing back at what their labors had wrought -
knowing to the depth of their communal souls
that we are more together than we are apart
Listen up, America! This is the music of community.
We are more together than we are apart.
© 2016 by Robert Charles Howard
Jul 31, 2016
Jul 31, 2016 at 10:16 AM UTC
torn jeans
dimples
station wagons
shifting eyebrows
eager hands
wry smiles
chapped lips
cheap beer
deep-set eyes
pirated music
hates his birthday
stoplight-kisses
star-gazing in cornfields
****** knuckles
broken minds
lanky limbs
poetry books
scruffy faces
jet-black coffee
calloused hands that still feel soft
adventurer's heart
jumping fences
midnight tokes
always gives you hickeys
always opens your door
worn sneakers
chewed pen caps
late for work
old windbreakers
dirt under his fingernails
omniscient smirks
expensive cologne
good intentions -
but is bad with goodbyes
hates himself for making you cry
broken cigarettes
aviator shades at night
a perpetually furrowed brow
and a laugh that sounds like autumn leaves as they crunch beneath your feet
m.f.
Oct 11, 2013
Oct 11, 2013 at 12:16 AM UTC
Round the wagons,
and call on the dogs!
For there is fury in that mist,
there is malice in that fog!
Arm yourselves wisely.
Shoulder steady, breath slow,
give in to eye’s end.
Shower sky with shot,
And do so
with fatal intent.
Line, volley and rising smoke
Un-surreptitious spending of saltpeter,
leaves quiet rise
to billowing choke.
Loosen formation
Send scouts up ahead
“How many the count?”
“Report:
none dead.”
“How can this be
we took distance,
aimed well, aimed true
And still count you no heads?”
“Sir,
machinations of the mind
…maybe it was instead?”
Pleated-dress-pants
barks back his threat,
"Court martial, you!"
"March,
forward,
ahead!".
Sep 28, 2025
Sep 28, 2025 at 3:12 AM UTC
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the ****** starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the **** on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would
take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
3.3k
Our snowmen, they're not made of white,
they're tumbleweeds, rolled up tight.
No top hat upon his head,
a cowboy hat sits there instead.
His face and buttons, tree ornaments,
boots and lariat, his accoutrements.
Saguaro cacti with lights wrapped round,
illuminate the landscaped grounds.
Old horse drawn wagons get the festive touch.
With lighted garlands, packages and such.
Porch rails glow with colored lights,
Christmas trees in windows, warm the nights.
Our little town gets all decked out.
Then we gather along the old parade route.
Folks on horseback with ribbons and bells.
The horses know the parade route well.
Marching school bands play Christmas songs,
trucks and tractors carry carolers along.
Floats abound from businesses and groups.
Braving the cold, the Christmas Cowboy Troops.
We all stand up to clap and cheer,
as Santa, as usual, brings up the rear.
Waving his red cowboy hat, in a horse drawn sleigh,
Welcoming Christmas, the Wickenburg way.
Dec 10, 2010
Dec 10, 2010 at 11:42 AM UTC
They huddle in the cold damp darkness
grateful for the sheltering sandstone
shuddering at each echoing blast
a remorseless dull ache
like their meagre rations
eyelids shutting wrinkling between attacks
seeking peace and inner sleepless solace.
'Them docks is taking a pasting.'
'Me Dad works there.'
Another attack, tunnels rumble
evoking century old echoes
of rusty trundling drum-line wagons
bearing sandstone blocks to build the docks
now being blitzed blighting the night sky.
The morning brings a dusty disquiet.
Merseyside emerges curses soldiers on.
Nov 1, 2015
Nov 1, 2015 at 10:42 AM UTC
There's this air in South France
So alive you can almost touch it
Soft enough, it blows away the candles
Numbered seats, train wagons, I wish I had taken with you
Warm hands on my frozen nose
a memory in red burning
Your arms, your hair, my cheeks
There's this air they call it Mistral
So loud and you can almost hold it
Light enough, it carries the grains of sand
Kaleidoscope films, sad endings, I wish you'd wipes away my tears
A stolen kiss in a forgotten dream
A wheel in Marseille, spinning
My scarf, my gloves, your lips
Jan 20, 2015
Jan 20, 2015 at 2:07 PM UTC
NEW neighbors came to the corner house at Congress and Green streets.
The look of their clean white curtains was the same as the rim of a nun's bonnet.
One way was an oyster pail factory, one way they made candy, one way paper boxes, strawboard cartons.
The warehouse trucks shook the dust of the ways loose and the wheels whirled dust-there was dust of hoof and wagon wheel and rubber tire-dust of police and fire wagons-dust of the winds that circled at midnights and noon listening to no prayers.
"O mother, I know the heart of you," I sang passing the rim of a nun's bonnet-O white curtains-and people clean as the prayers of Jesus here in the faded ramshackle at Congress and Green.
Dust and the thundering trucks won-the barrages of the street wheels and the lawless wind took their way-was it five weeks or six the little mother, the new neighbors, battled and then took away the white prayers in the windows?
2.8k
The Pumpkin fest
The night of Halloween,
We went to the pumpkin fest
We were all in costumes and dressed our best
thousands of pumpkins were on the ground
Wagons hooked up by horses were all around
Filled with excitement
And filled with cheer
As we load up on the wagon for another year
Oh how I love Halloween
Carameled apples with sticks in between
horses pulling the hay ride
yelling trick or treat out side
They fill our bags with lots of candy
Reese 's peanut 's and m&ms;
snickers and kit kats
and three Musketeers
Oh how I love Halloween this year.
The grown ups are sitting and drinking hot cider
I'm dressed as a witch sitting by a tiger
Ghost and goblins their there too
a Cinderella and bear bear boo
The night's coming to a end
and the hay ride is over
It won't happen again til next October.
Oct 28, 2013
Oct 28, 2013 at 12:38 PM UTC
Arthur Burning Arrow
had a lot of talent.
He could capture the salient
parts of the story.
He painted a picture
of a red river
and the first White settlers
crossing the plains.
He took a lot of pains
with clouds you could feel.
Dust you could sneeze.
Tall grass up to a horse's knees.
Our teacher said
That's a horrific painting!
I thought it was terrific.
Just sayin.
I swear, all I could see
were burning wagons
for a thousand miles.
Feb 18, 2016
Feb 18, 2016 at 9:04 AM UTC
JESUS emptied the devils of one man into forty hogs and the hogs took the edge of a high rock and dropped off and down into the sea: a mob.
The sheep on the hills of Australia, blundering fourfooted in the sunset mist to the dark, they go one way, they hunt one sleep, they find one pocket of grass for all.
Karnak? Pyramids? Sphinx paws tall as a coolie? Tombs kept for kings and sacred cows? A mob.
Young roast pigs and naked dancing girls of Belshazzar, the room where a thousand sat guzzling when a hand wrote: Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin? A mob.
The honeycomb of green that won the sun as the Hanging Gardens of Nineveh, flew to its shape at the hands of a mob that followed the fingers of Nebuchadnezzar: a mob of one hand and one plan.
Stones of a circle of hills at Athens, staircases of a mountain in Peru, scattered clans of marble dragons in China: each a mob on the rim of a sunrise: hammers and wagons have them now.
Locks and gates of Panama? The Union Pacific crossing deserts and tunneling mountains? The Woolworth on land and the Titanic at sea? Lighthouses blinking a coast line from Labrador to Key West? Pigiron bars piled on a barge whistling in a fog off Sheboygan? A mob: hammers and wagons have them to-morrow.
The mob? A typhoon tearing loose an island from thousand-year moorings and bastions, shooting a volcanic ash with a fire tongue that licks up cities and peoples. Layers of worms eating rocks and forming loam and valley floors for potatoes, wheat, watermelons.
The mob? A jag of lightning, a geyser, a gravel mass loosening...
The mob ... kills or builds ... the mob is Attila or Ghengis Khan, the mob is Napoleon, Lincoln.
I am born in the mob-I die in the mob-the same goes for you-I don't care who you are.
I cross the sheets of fire in No Man's land for you, my brother-I slip a steel tooth into your throat, you my brother-I die for you and I **** you-It is a twisted and gnarled thing, a crimson wool:
One more arch of stars,
In the night of our mist,
In the night of our tears.
2.4k
its funny
a flower called impatient
still has to root down
and tangle with grass
you too
never to be caught dead
in the same social circle
as a window planter
or aluminum pinwheels
the same instruments
that brought you radio flyer wagons and torn-knees in your jeans
innocence
****
you window-shop
with a brick in your handbag
and a white patterned dress
May 28, 2013
May 28, 2013 at 10:38 PM UTC
SOMEBODY'S little girl-how easy to make a sob story over who she was once and who she is now.
Somebody's little girl-she played once under a crab-apple tree in June and the blossoms fell on the dark hair.
It was somewhere on the Erie line and the town was Salamanca or Painted Post or Horse's Head.
And out of her hair she shook the blossoms and went into the house and her mother washed her face and her mother had an ache in her heart at a rebel voice, "I don't want to."
Somebody's little girl-forty little girls of somebodies splashed in red tights forming horseshoes, arches, pyramids-forty little show girls, ponies, squabs.
How easy a sob story over who she once was and who she is now-and how the crabapple blossoms fell on her dark hair in June.
Let the lights of Broadway spangle and splatter-and the taxis hustle the crowds away when the show is over and the street goes dark.
Let the girls wash off the paint and go for their midnight sandwiches-let 'em dream in the morning sun, late in the morning, long after the morning papers and the milk wagons-
Let 'em dream long as they want to ... of June somewhere on the Erie line ... and crabapple blossoms.
2.2k
(Plaster cast at Pompeii)
[THE TOUR GUIDE]
*“Ladies and gentlemen, here we are at Pompeii's
fabled Thermal Baths where heated water was
passed through duct work in the walls. One can
imagine Nero himself stopping here on one of
his visits.”*
[BONITO]
Bonito stepped out of the bathhouse and looked up.
Vesuvius rumbled - shaking ash and fire skyward.
Breaking into a run he sought the south road,
glancing back anxiously at the
vast dark cloud billowing down the mountain.
*"The principal city roads were recessed
and wagons were required to have standardized
wheelbases and clearances to fit in channels cut
into the stone. Follow me please to the residential
area.”*
He gained the road and his feet
pounded the stones of the “via stabiana.”
The cloud multiplied and fell on the city.
Ever deepening layers of ash clogged Benito’s path.
Heart pounding in his chest he lengthened his strides.
*“Leaving the opulent villas with their spacious
atria, we now enter the market area where we
shall see a display of remarkable interest. During
excavations, empty spaces were discovered in
the ash deposits.”*
The rising ash captured his left leg.
Bonito inhaled the fiery air and ******
forward into a burst of falling soot
but was unable to finish his stride.
*“Archaeologists poured plaster into the voids
revealing the outlined bodies of Pompeiins
trapped in their final moments. Take, for example,
this man caught in mid-step with no time
to escape the life choking dust.”*
June, 2006
Jul 30, 2013
Jul 30, 2013 at 1:32 PM UTC
she spoke to me, on the daffodil sweetness of the pasture
while the grasses, waving, muttered their moist message on the wind
of rot, and renewal,
(but hold your lips, be still for an explosion of intimacy, for a moment)
'Are those a constellation?' she asks.
"The Pleiades."
'You don't know that.'
she doesn't care where the car begins, exhaling gently, to stop
and she commends its forward motion
(the keening love of a sodium light
and forgetfulness in every bone of my body)
I love the thrum of it, below my feet,
murmuring vibrato in the pedals.
They have a Huck Finn cave display at Disneyworld. In Adventure Island, or somewhere, or one of us, deep in the vastness of spines and fingers.
Its fiberglass walls are a portrait of America -
the glean of dew a reflection of that spirit
that drove us over the borders, the rivers, to Oregon,
so we could love under a naked moon,
and renounce our lives of glee, and security
for the bright unsettled plantation of the starless fields.
'You don't know a constellation from a cloud of dandelion seeds.'
But oh, my relentless pioneer love, I do - I know a constellation
is made of stars, and rough determination, and I know that,
love is a today thing, and we are yesterday people
that pain is tomorrow, and we will always be children of the dusk preceding
destined, dear, to find our love receding
Are you prepared, or will the wilderness this time swallow you?
Feb 23, 2010
Feb 23, 2010 at 10:46 AM UTC
Fifteen uniform clouds
Roll across the prairie
In a neat little line on the horizon
Kicking up dust storms as they go
Hurrying along
Silently
The settlers driving their wagons
Keeping their lips tight
And their eyes sharp
Because there are Indians
Lurking behind every rock
Bandits and thieves
Waiting in the hills
Snakes
Scorpions
Buffalo
Guns
Disease
Separation
Heartache
Might surprise them at any moment
Might make them victims and this moment their last
The settler’s hearts are racing
At 120 beats per minute
Pounding out a rhythm
Unlike anything they’ve ever known
Their hands are working at nothing
In the thin dry air
Twirling, twisting, pirouetting frantically
Their jaws are clenching tightly
Spasming, biting, drawing blood from their tongues
Their eyes are wide, unblinking, terrified
Seeing it all as it really is,
Really should be
And secretly, perhaps subconsciously,
Unrealizing,
They hope life will always feel this alive
But then,
In a few weeks
When they’ve made it to the city
To the town
To the shelter and comfort of ease
Civilization opens up her greedy maw
Swallows them whole
And licks her ****** fingers clean
So as not to stain her tidy white frock
And the settlers do nothing
Complacently allowing themselves to be digested
But they are thinking
“This is what I wanted?”
The voices in their heads have reached fever pitch, disgusted, screaming,
“This is what I wanted??”
And still they do nothing
Mar 19, 2012
Mar 19, 2012 at 4:05 PM UTC
I AM an ancient reluctant conscript.
On the soup wagons of Xerxes I was a cleaner of pans.
On the march of Miltiades' phalanx I had a haft and head;
I had a bristling gleaming spear-handle.
Red-headed Caesar picked me for a teamster.
He said, "Go to work, you Tuscan *******
Rome calls for a man who can drive horses."
The units of conquest led by Charles the Twelfth,
The whirling whimsical Napoleonic columns:
They saw me one of the horseshoers.
I trimmed the feet of a white horse Bonaparte swept the night stars with.
Lincoln said, "Get into the game; your nation takes you."
And I drove a wagon and team and I had my arm shot off
At Spottsylvania Court House.
I am an ancient reluctant conscript.
2.1k
964
“Unto Me?” I do not know you—
Where may be your House?
“I am Jesus—Late of Judea—
Now—of Paradise”—
Wagons—have you—to convey me?
This is far from Thence—
“Arms of Mine—sufficient Phaeton—
Trust Omnipotence”—
I am spotted—”I am Pardon”—
I am small—”The Least
Is esteemed in Heaven the Chiefest—
Occupy my House”—
2k
Sunshine, spice and spades.
Butterfly's, beards and bread.
Yellow, yearbooks and yodeling.
Paint, pizza and platinum.
Music, melons and magic.
Zoos, zippers and zillions.
Apples, analysis and art.
Waiting, wagons and wafflers.
Give me a beer with friends any day.
Life's more fun that way.
Mar 7, 2013
Mar 7, 2013 at 8:40 PM UTC
Last night I watched in silence
At the end of the road in forest deep
I hid amongst the trees watching in awe
As gypsies dance while others sleep
Under the violet hue of evening sky
Haloed by evening's golden moon
I watched gypsies dance and sing
As flames from bonfires leaped high in the air
Dark haired women in shawls and beads
Happily dancing and twirling without care
Casting their spells of magic and enchantment
Performing their honeyed seductions
Blended with aphrodisiacs of scent and sound
Gypsy men with kerchiefs around their necks
Hoops of silver adorning their ears, singing joyful songs
Children laughing, dogs barking
As if they’re singing right along
Oh, I so wanted to join them as I stood watching in awe
Envious was I of their freedom and joy
Caravans painted in bright images and colors
Tambourines jingling as velvet shadows danced in the night
Skirts swirling, gold and silver bangles on their arms
Dancing 'round the bonfire's fiery light
Accordions singing, with happy notes from a fiddler's bow
As they sang and danced barefoot under evening moon
In the coming dawn once again...
It will be time for them to pack and move on
With a last meal served...
The caravans are readied to make another journey long
"Gather yourself up gypsy girls
Wonderful as it may seem…
A gypsies’ life is never their own
Time to move on
Time to find another home
You must have gypsy blood
In order to survive"
As their wagons move along dusty trails
They'll be looking for a place to camp
A place to call home... at least for awhile
A place to hang their colored paper lamps
Until...
Suddenly- a cry rings out
"Stop the wagons, ring the bells
We've found the perfect place
The perfect place for magic spells
Tomorrow brings a brand new day!
Let's feast, dance and make merry
Come on let's get things underway"
And so...
The journey goes on
And never ends!
"Gather yourself up gypsy girls
Wonderful as it may seem…
A gypsies’ life is never their own
Time to move on, time to leave
Time to find another home
You must have gypsy blood
In order to survive"
Apr 10, 2013
Apr 10, 2013 at 6:17 PM UTC