A CAUTION AGAINST TOO MUCH CHURCH TOO SOON
Brother Wally at age three or four
sitting on the tracks as the train approaches
wanting to find out what it’s like to be an angel
The last minute rescue
granting him some fame and slack
when he went back to being
the little devil he had been the day before
THINGS I DID, BUT DON’T RECOMMEND
#233 – THE LONGNECK LOB
In Saskatchewan
there aren’t many games
you can play outdoors all year
A favorite of our prairie youth
was tossing bottles at roadside signs
It’s not as simple as it sounds
there’s height and speed and distance
added degree of difficulty for the driver
left handed over roof one eye on the road
All in the wrist at 60 miles per hour
Let it fly forty feet before the sign
with just enough oomph and arc
to float to shattering conclusion
and cheers and beers all round
There is still some question
as to whether aim improved
as time and beer went by
WATER TO WATER
See the old farmer
sitting by the sea
Born on the prairie
it was water to dust
Dust and dust
and praying for rain
and shovelling snow
and cursing hail
And carrying life
up the hill in a pail
And always trying to get back
TECHNOLOGY
The day breathed in
and the day breathed out
After lunch my father took a nap
– the horses had to rest
By supper time they were fed
fed and brushed and thanked
And then the tractors came
– and tractors do not nap
Not content with that small theft
they soon grew lights and stole the dark
He fed them gas, they pulled the plow
But not once, one to the other
did they ever speak of love
PULLING PIPE
Trouble down the well
and me, my dad, and my brothers
are Texas roughnecks
pulling spinning and stacking pipe
pipe and rod and “Careful dammit!
If you drop that rod the well is shot”
We’re Red Adair, fighting a fire
we’re wet and muddy and cold and mad
and we’ve got to get it done by dark
The gold down there’s not black but red
an iron rich sea hiding away
from the pulling power of the prairie sun
Looking back fifty years from a poet’s perch
I pull
spin and stack
metaphor and meaning
Back then it was just men
doing what they had to do
and white faced cattle waiting
MATH
If a train leaves Moose Jaw
heading west at the speed of first memory
Engine, cars, and caboose
zebraing by behind a snowfence
smoke billowing back over its shoulder
And another leaves, traveling east
from my writing of it now
When will they meet
at the small town of Courval
and your reading of this page
THE SILENCE OF SLEIGHS
My earliest memories do not have a sound track
The steppes of Canada are the steppes of Russia
Zhivago watching Lara leave . . . without her song
The horse’s hooves
compressing snow to greater silence
the runners sinking softly into silence
skimming surface of silence
stretching out the notes of silence
The bells on the horse . . . . . . . . . were there bells?