EAGLES
I watched them glide and wondered
do the eagles see the air
I know of course that I can
when there’s enough moisture there
But I was thinking about something extra
Like how a dog can hear high notes
And I can feel you from anywhere
When there’s enough moisture there
GROWING STONES
Each spring on our farm
the old father sun turned up his warmth and
charm
melting the frost deep in the heart of the mother
earth
The
egg babies
thereby created
rose to the surface
to play in the open air
mischievous miscreants all
waiting to jamb diskers and drills
and if they get a little grain to hide in
ambush swathers, combines, and oil pans of
grain trucks
so we had to gather them into
school bus stone boats and wagons and haul
them off to places where they could be with their
older brothers and sisters on the reform school
rock pile
there is still some hope
that someday they can learn to be pillars of the
community
GRAND CANYON
Eight triple one Gulf, this is seventy eight Tango Sierra
how would you like to drop in to Grand Canyon airport?
We were flying Calgary-Phoenix; he, Phoenix-Sun Valley
a friend had just lost an engine. He needed to land
and wanted a ride to Phoenix.
I didn’t know the runway but I followed him in
It’s not a very long runway, and at the end
are some pretty big trees.
I was low and slow in the old Twin Commander
the one with the geared engines
The ones you always had to handle oh so gentle
like your throttles were a handful of eggs
So I played the game and brought in the power easy
Too slow and you eat the trees
too fast and you eat the pistons, and the trees
And it was a mighty pretty runway
when you were standing on the ground
On the way back from Phoenix
It was late afternoon and we were lured
by the siren beauty of the Grand Canyon.
Right turn diversion, West to East as slow as we could go
Just below the rim the whole length of it
watching the magic colors as the sun
behind us lit up the canyon walls
Almost out of fuel we finally pulled ourselves away and
turned north to find a runway.
The wind was from the west and we had to land into the
blinding light of the sun just before it went down.
It was as if it had turned on us, this light that had made us
feel so alive, (although we had really turned on it) and was
about to kill us now because we didn’t have enough fuel to
go around and we had to face it
straight on.
With two pilot passengers looking out the side windows and
calling out heights and directions, and a little luck we got
down. And we felt good again, very good.
Always the turnings, always the changing, always the other
side of the coin. So many times in that part
of my life it seemed that the beauty and the
pleasure were but a thin membrane away
from the fear and the danger.
SOLO
It was first solo cross country night
with all the fears of those new at flight
But the full winter moon lit a chess-board
of snow covered stubble and black fallow fields
and small creeks, winding east, from the mountains
All of the fears into the liquid moonlight melted
while flared nerves stayed open to the beauty
And the Cessna ran smooth at five thousand feet
I couldn’t have been higher, at fifty
NEW HAY
The scent of hay
thrown upward in the cutting
Too rich and heavy to remain aloft
falls back to lie among its fallen friends
Walk shuffling small feet through it
and it lifts again in clouds to nostrils
Breathed in sweet particles remain
I do believe … there’s some there yet
PRAIRIE CHICKEN
I came up through the valley where the homesteaders
had tried to make a go of it for a few years, past the tin
cans and other evidence of their short stay trying to rust
itself back into the ground. Up over the crest of the hill
where the Indians had lived for centuries with no more
evidence than the weathered rocks of tepee rings
It was spring and I stumbled upon what they may have
seen for years, the ageless mating ceremony of about
twenty five or thirty grouse. They didn’t see or hear me
and I stopped about ten yards away and watched,
although my mother might not have thought it proper
The hens ran around, heads down and tails up in
unbashful invitation; while the cocks puffed up the
air bags in their chests and drummed their challenge
And they looked handsome and brave in their posturing
and beckoning and their readiness for reckoning. And
the fights were on, straight on and straight up, with spurs
and feathers flying
It was vicious but pure. Not a cock fight for the
amusement of the bloody minded, but a way to see that
only the strongest would sire the little broods that would
have to survive the hawks and the snakes and the
weather, and all the dangers of a land where it takes a
great deal of courage – just to be a chicken