My breath still catches when I think of you;

my chest tightens

imposing and unchecked

because I am sprinting towards you but standing still

always always when you come to mind.

 

I am hoping soon and hoping never

that I will forget the smell of sagebrush hills and washboard roads

and bugling elk and turning leaves;

of snow falling over your leaden cliffs.

 

I am on my knees again.

I am doubled over at the kitchen counter for you

feeling those things I can’t explain;

those things that collapse anew when you come to mind.

You are the death of someone close

but far from dead.

 

They went through with it

and left you perched with unmoved wings

so they could fly south instead,

and you could soar without flying

as you always have,

but with no one there to see.

 

This is what it’s like

sending off and putting a price tag on,

the heaven that first carried you

high.

 

Today she laid all her goods before him;

from the soft wind through the drying corn

making its whoosh whoosh whoosh

alongside his footsteps,

to the soaring cottonwood tree

whose branches thick and strong

compel the creek below to flow.

There is no one here with too much money

nothing complicated or dirty—

only the sound of occasional voices

from the small white houses

beside the tall silver silos.

Even the politics are simple:

be good my friend;

do good my neighbor,

and that creek will flow

through your straight rows

even when it’s dry.

 

karenhansonpercy

They’re either chasing toads

or sword fighting

hanging upside down

or igniting;

 

their hands never seem to be white;

their string never untangled from the kite;

never too low on the limbs of a tree,

always too far from where to see

 

their boots floating slowly down the creek;

their dirty clothes from one day, enough for a week–

piled on a rock from where they launch

a thousand boyish dreams only dinnertime can staunch,

 

and somehow when the day is at end

I am the lucky mother who can mend

their scrapes and cuts and feelings and tears

wishing boyhood lasted a hundred more years…

 

 

 

At first it was the ocean I loved
then the mountains
then the ocean and the mountains again

but now I see
it will always be
the prairie.

If I could carve out a little hut
camouflaged in a verdant bluff I would

spend my days turning circles in the long, gilded grass with the sun
watching the clouds narrate each breath
I would

let the wind decide when it’s time to retreat
before the prairie toads and pointed frogs hop about under the brilliant
reflection of the moon
whispering the word eternal

let the snakes unbothered, carve out their ssssssssses of gold
and the jackrabbits leap for joy
over their communal unanimity
I would

let the coyotes
yip yip yip
me into a bottomless slumber
of cool air and simple dreams

where bison rise to a bluff
under the darkned veil of an afternoon storm
and mustang wildly toss their obdurate heads
bucking and cantering

into this earthy outer-space
more cosmic and unscathed
than what people sail or climb…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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…