(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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

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…