LIFEBUOY
I never have learned to swear very well
which just goes to show
that training will tell
That there is much to be said for good homes
and payoffs for stern discipline and hope
It’s not that I don’t know the words
but they all still taste like soap
HOME MADE ICE CREAM
When I was five we lived on a ranch
still forty miles and forty years
away from electric power
We only got to eat ice cream
when hail lay deep enough on the ground
to be scooped into the old hand mixer
Many a hot evening in August and July
five of us sat on those hard ranch steps
looking out at the Western sky
Watching the black clouds and the grey
building and rolling our way
Silently praying our protestant Hail Marys
four for and Dad against
FOR IUDITA
(a child of the survivors)
Artists without hands
hold the brush with their feet
Without hands or feet
hold the brush in their teeth
As for me and my friend
all that remains is the navel
And small circles
in the center of
the canvas
REED BETWEEN THE LIONS
My mother’s will was always
stronger than my won’t
My father’s won’t was always
stronger than my will
Caretaker soft or Cowboy strong
How quick I learned to change my face
to face the faces that I faced
And’
I can still spin that mirror now so you
can see the face you want to see
But neither you nor I will know
which one is me
FATHER’S POEM
My father’s poems
did not come down to us on paper
He was eight years old when his mother died
his youngest brother not yet three
They say he adopted the care
of the sweet sad child
and told him a story each night
Night after night after night
New stories he made up each night
And he would gather him up in the story
and hold him there
until he slept
I’M BACK
I went away but I’m back
I’ve met the Queen
but I’m back
I’ve worked and grown till I dropped
and learned till my ear wax popped
I’m better and kinder and wiser
with an armful of gifts
and I’m back
Oh dear, isn’t anybody here
SUNDAY AFTERNOON
It was a Sunday afternoon about a year ago today
I couldn’t sit, I couldn’t stand I just knew I couldn’t stay
So I took off for Toronto fifteen hundred miles away
Two days of boring meetings,
couldn’t stand to have one more
didn’t know where I needed to be
but it wasn’t here I knew for sure
So I grabbed a train to Windsor
and Detroit which lies next door
Outside spring was springing and calling more and more
and I’d get to see some country that I’d never seen before
Oh, the sheep were soft upon the land
and there was magic in the day
as I sipped my rum and cola
and rhymed couplets all the way
Checked in on Wednesday, wondering what to do
maybe I could try to call a good old friend or two
There was a man I’d met in Banff
just three weeks before
a man of love and wisdom
that I’d like to see once more
And a lady of my poems
that I’d seen just twice before
thirty minutes in an airport
and two hours on the shore
He was busy in a meeting she answered on first try
she had booked off work without knowing why
And when I told her that I was in her town
she said “I’ve got a story and I’ll be right down”
It seems that her grand dad
who had raised her as a child
had died not long ago
and the grief had drove her wild
The family all were fighting for the pennies on his eyes
and there was no one there to hear her heartfelt cries
So she ran from that hospital not knowing what to do
and stood on the highest hill alone in a sky of blue
And loudly called my name
“Please come, please, I need you”
When I asked had she made this cry
and had I come real soon
“Oh it wasn’t very long ago
just Sunday afternoon”
PICTURE TAKING
The simple people of the earth
do not like to have their pictures taken
They say it captures them
and takes away their souls
If you’ve been with those you love
who still can see you only as you were
And for their own good reasons
need to keep you there
While your every urge of
every breath says grow
Then you’ll know
what the simple people know
MY COUSIN WAYNE
When Wayne was thirteen
he had the finest blondest hair
the finest features and the finest mind
of all the cousins round
A city boy and cooler about everything than all of us
until we took him hunting
When his first shot hit the rabbit
he ran and cried and held it till it died
At eighteen he quit school with A grades
a month before grad to get a jump on a job
met a girl and bragged of achievement on first date
Over achievement it turned out to be
quick marriage, quick, two children three
Army for security, liquor for the pain
it was twenty years before I saw him again
He was in a downstairs bar
sitting there as coarse and thick as adobe brick
I wanted to roll it all back
reach in for the lost fineness and yank it all inside out
And hold him like the rabbit when he cried
still innocent when it died
KENNY and ME
(or Ranching at Eighteen)
Together we were young
and strong and very bold
And together we could drink
more beer than we could hold
We could drive home late and fast
singing every Johnny Horton song
And then fall asleep for minutes
and still answer the morning gong
We would work it out in the hot hot sun
(so easy then did the poisons yield)
As we sweated bales with pith forks
and passed gas
in a thousand acre field