Saying Goodbye

Once upon a time,
four spinning, purposed wheels of a yellow Ryder truck guided a family of five, their dog and three cats towards a place they would never want to leave.
Cabin and Flowers
Gone were the smooth, manicured lawns of a golf course nearby;
gone were the country club dinners and fireworks over the 18th hole;
gone was grass so soft you could run barefoot for miles.

Jim in Clouds

They arrived, and the children spent that summer exploring the old dude ranch cabins of their new world
steeped in space and freedom;

they savored the sharp smell of sage in the perfect open air
and the wild mountains and the climbing trees became their home.

They watched storm fronts pass over the rocks and hummocks of Yellowstone,
rode their mountain bikes on forever roads
and counted how many deer they saw in a day, in an hour–in a minute;
they swam in scattered ponds and let the creek calm their teenage temperaments.
Cadence Freedom

In the winter,
When the family couldn’t make it up the road they spent the night in town;
their eyelashes froze together while feeding the horses
and the kids were enthusiastic skiers of the tangled hills surrounding their new refuge.
P1110060

While their East Coast friends spent the summers of their teenage years
in Martha’s Vineyard
or Cape Cod,
these teenagers lifted bales of hay and rode horses—
they spotted moose and grizzly bear
and let the wind smooth their cheeks and
invigorate their souls.
Cadence Freedom 2

And when they went away to school, and moved away
and started families of their own,
they were lucky enough to come back to that little piece of heaven—
their home–
so unmistakably and entirely a place of life and beauty
unlike anywhere else.
Four Bear Mountain Sunset
And they will forever be grateful
for the years they were able to know the land;
for the love that reaches beyond
the farthest glacier of Jim’s Mountain—
beyond those winter-white stars
in that lucid sky
above that familiar, faithful shingled roof
refusing to be forgotten…

Freckled Horse

July 8th 2

I’ve known you for a year now

white freckled horse with your limpet mane.

 

For a year you have been standing there by the fence–

maybe an eternity by that fence,

self-cornered near the barbed filament

always facing the mountains.

 

Sometimes you shift, I’ve noted;

never subject to the wind.

 

Yes,

sometimes you shift

and I’d like to know

what moves you to amend your bearing?

To look up without raising those eyes?

 

Once, I saw you standing that constant way

cool and still in the loafing shed

just because it’s there;

your head still low,

but not for sadness.

 

And when I pass you on foot

it is the same

save that you lean into me

as if we shared a secret.

 

Do they know what they have

the proprietors I never see–

the ones who keep your ribs from jutting

and your field from turning grey?

 

Do they know that there are words in your unsettling composure;

whispers from a tranquility millions seek to match;

wisdom from watching the encoded purpose of colonies colonizing?

 

Tell me

quiet, unmoving horse:

 

are they the lives of absented people

scattered about your cerise skin?

 

He Sleeps

He’s right,
it is windy,
but there are no tornadoes.
So when he comes down the stairs with his flashlight
both scared and trying to save me
we consider the dark clouds and determine them benign.
I think about how much taller he is now
than this morning
and so he sleeps next to me;
Miller Moths and their soft thuds building in the swirl of the fan above.
He surprises me with his sticky, limp hand–
the upward palm and curled fingertips which against my better judgement
he neglected to wash just a few hours or a lifetime ago.
And who am I kidding?
The prince of campouts and sprinklers and three or four muddied outfits per day
breathes so perfectly.

There is no better judgement.

respondez s’il vous plait

kindly accept my refusal
to attend your most excellent party
that would no doubt give me great pleasure
any other time
but there is a tempest sky to watch
and a prairie to receive her cyclone fumes

an unrepeated house
leaning into the coils of an eddying rush
and I unrepentant
leaning with it

exacting my brain
to breathe

but I am sure your martinis are lovely
Prairie House

KarenHansonPercy

The Starling

I was raised to hold a gun the right way

and use it

and to eat what I killed.

But I turned off the pot before it sang to a boil,

kept the blender on low so as not to startle;

made the children whisper.

I turned up the towel to stare at you;

dropped the long straw with some earthy concoction

towards your gaping, skyward beak

equally mad at, and in awe of your mother

for her two day absence and her ability to get you this far.

I am sorry and not so sorry for how they circled around you

on the ground as you tried but couldn’t take flight,

and I am sorry but not sorry for the way they hover still

over your shaky torso and wet down

(resulting from the insecure grip of the cat’s mouth).

The cat—who already wolfed down a mouse for supper

perhaps thinking we didn’t notice,

the cat—who once we brought home in the same manner;

cradled in a warm blanket-nest with her tiny mouth receiving temperate drops of milk

from the well-intentioned hoverers…

and when the mower uncovers a den of mice

or a burrowing snake,

when the birds hit the window

or a starling takes flight because we cupped it in our fanatical hands,

I consider the notion

that a rifle in one hand

and a stranded sparrow in the other,

are allowed to reconcile.

KarenHansonPercy

Honey and Fodder and Earth

They are out
the egrets and the herons–
the egrets with their marauding span of wings;
gentle titans of the sky.
The herons with their dull, cobalt ells
long, thin elbow-ells nodding to the undercooked clouds;

they are out
the lowland birds
red and blue and yellow pinafores flitting colors from the wires,
calling songs from their grasses;

they are out
the unguarded horses of daybreak
running fencelines,
giddy with the advent of a meal;

they are out
the father’s morning voice
sighing words to the small boy as they gather eggs,
smelling like honey and fodder and earth…

Horse in BarnFarmhouse 5-18

KarenHansonPercy

Roses

the dog dug up the roses I planted four weeks ago
he dug them up thrice
and scattered their shredded stems around the exactitude of the holes I dug
and when I stuck them back into the ground
I pricked my fingers three times for each tetchy vine I rooted
and forgot to water them for as many days
then the weatherman predicted a freeze
and of course it snowed
and then it froze more nights than the perforations on my fingers

yet today they bloom–
spirited green and bordered red
spreading their fast arms into the garden bed
reaching for the legs of the pergola
as if forgetting their birth and the days that followed

and seeing them now
I cannot help but know
how much like parenting it is
to plant a hearty rose

–KarenHansonPercy

Prairie Trees Rising

The trees in the prairie creek beds
are not like bears
who wake up from winter
stretching and groaning and groggy
with their bad breath and heavy, sluggish movement.
They are not like people—
asthmatic after a bout with the flu; healing, but never coming back as strong as they were.
Winter makes us older.
Yet through the brittle battle of cold and wind–
the trees who stand there quietly
hosting their cocooned birds of prey
and doling out sincerity
are growing younger.
The cottonwood, oak, the birch, the cypress and dogwood–
all into their emerald magnificence each spring
as if it is a normal matter to gain more youth
and be delivered into one’s prime
again and again, year after year.

The prairie trees never age—
their green is green each Eastertide
inversely screaming youth with the voices of
adolescent boys
in the bodies of women.
Their fists are in the air and they go to war
and they consign and keep house in concert.

There is nothing more perpetual,
more fresh, more new or puerile
than the prospect of a prairie tree rising.
–KarenHansonPercy
tree with owl
trees creek bed