Only when I am awake enough to be there
the Pelicans arrive to say good morning
Morning Run
Sometimes you realize you’re not alone,
and then come to understand this is the best kind of loneliness…
Dorian Gray
(Poet’s note: I recently revisited and worked on some poems I wrote about ranch life many years ago…the themes are a little darker and the writing style a little different)…
there was Whiskey too
he lent me his favorite book
which I forgot to give back
and so he took what was his
when I wasn’t there
I pictured him quickly entering
and quickly withdrawing
not touching or looking at anything except for his book
The Picture of Dorian Gray
inside the front cover
ripping and guarding the curled yellow pages underneath
was a note from someone
indecipherable
in pencil
a life in pencil
he saddled and wrangled horses
never shaved
had one of those moustaches you could twist
when he looked at the mountains
he looked through them
used to run with some women in Detroit they say
one of them bore his little boy
who drowned a year later at her feet
in a lake at her feet
Saturday nights
he sat on the porch’s edge
and Whiskey drank his namesake down
until the flies would swat his hangover away
with the running horses the next day
praying for the headache to leave
so he can try and love himself
again
karenhansonpercy
Farmers Still
farmers still
at the kitchen table
we cup our hands around coffee mugs
to fight off the chill of fall rains
we talk about late harvest and sprouting swaths
and the whims of marketing boards money-lenders
and mother nature
we remember past years with bumper crops
and how the north-east quarter always produces
but this year the swaths are under water
and tough as things seem it’s not so bad as Harrisons
after their auction last year they moved to the city
they say they used to lie awake wondering if the old boss cow
made it through the winter if the brockle-faced heifer
calved on her own
they drive out to check other people’s crops
on land their grandfather homsteaded
stop in at coffee row talk about the weather
like they were still here
From Maverick Western Verse 1994 Gibbs Smith Publisher
Discovering the Apple Tree
The day we discovered the apple tree
we crawled on our knees to gather the ones that had dropped;
our fingers traced the softened pock marks, the partially round, the one-sided and the distorted—
each apple a life that deserved a complete and loving examination
as any candidate bound for cobbler should be.
And for the ones still clinging to the tree,
we discouraged the bees from their surface clutch
and linked our hands together so as to make a step
from which to reach the apples aloft.
Those too received their seasonal inspection
and the bucket swelled from sunken to round;
some too petite too peel, others with their spoiling divets—
not one unable to give at least,
a fingernail bite of bitter sweetness
of which we had many—
a bowl filled with tiny, sour cutouts to spread around the bottom of the pan;
the top of course, a mixture of oats and sugar, flour and butter
and one egg whose shells we extracted with surgical precision
from the awaiting, jumble of flavors.
Its marriage with the oven soon then did flood the house
in ardor
so that later,
we could eat each piece of unduplicated deliciousness
as if we had anything to do with it.
Boyhood
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…
Cutting Season
The lavender this summer
grew so high and thick
that within the purple, sprouting flesh
a tangled waltz of other grasses grew
so high and thick too.
Thank you
for the the assault of sweetness
when I do what my grandfather did
and watch the mountain shadows move
from my scything seat above the sod;
I’d like to think we float together
he and I
and that his hand rests on my back
while we look out over the rendered rows of silage
and the softened arc of water raising the tall
tall corn…
At First It Was The Ocean I Loved
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…
I Will Never Get Tired
of the horses coming to greet me at the fence
or the sky behind them
telling a good story…
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.
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…