I NEVER SAW MY MOTHER ON HORSEBACK
I understand that
she used to ride to school
but she was little and it was a farm
and somehow that didn’t seem to count
When she was about 75 she told me
about going with dad to the far end of the ranch
on a beautiful day a long time ago
to help round up some strays
She said that she liked it a lot
and couldn’t remember why she didn’t do it more
ROPE BURNS
I want to be able to bring home to you
Not only what I caught today
but the rope burns from
the ones that got away
Not only the buckles for the ones
that I stayed on for the eight
but the taste of the dirt
and other stuff I ate
Not only the meat from that old bear
but all the claw marks he left there
That you’re the one I want to kiss them well
also shows the love that I can’t tell
ROUNDUP
It’s about the hardest dustiest best work a man can get
The pride of the heeling rope, thrown snake quick from a
good horse and the slow steady pull, dragging the white face
out where the boys with the hot irons
can record the feat
Three hundred cows sing of calves lost and found, and above
all through it all the full strong laugh of one of the boys,
where a slip was made or a kick well placed
At the end of the day, you wrap a rope sore hand around a
spring cold beer, and lean back against the old pole fence
deep in the pain, and the sweat, and the moment
Completely released from the wheel of desire
There’s no place you’d rather be
There’s no one you’d rather be with
and you’re too damn tired to move anyway
GO GENTLY
When you break horses and break land
you end up with broken horses
and broken land
When you approach with the reverence
of a listening friend
It is amazing how far
they are willing
to carry you
HEREFORDS
They’re not as storied as the Texas longhorn
nor as hairy as the Highland creed
And they’re not nearly so sophisticated
as the latest European breed
They sure don’t calf out as easy as Angus
but all around, they’re all you need
(AND THEY’RE PRETTY TOO)
I remember
few things as beautiful
as looking back from the point
and seeing a few hundred Herefords
pouring through a cleft in the hills
down to the home corrals
like a spring flood
red as earth and blood
Rolling with white faced foam
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
GOPHER TAILS
When I was seven
gopher tails were three cents
The county had a bounty to arrest the little pest
not exactly a price on their heads
but you get the picture
So we hauled buckets of water
to drown them out
learned from the bigger boys
how to tie a noose in binder twine
placed it around the hole
and waited
Curiosity, which has been known to kill cats
is not very good for gophers either
Once caught
they were run in mad races
spun to centrifugal asphyxiation
or finished off in other cruel ways
before yielding us our hard earned bounty
In the spring we watched their return
to the snow speckled pasture
running tumbling wrestling
making love
And the wonderful babies
when they first ventured out
to try sunshine grass and shaky legs
It amazes me now
that as boys
We could take such joy
in their playful
beauty
And in their deaths
THRESHING TIME
I remember at Christmas getting a great threshing machine
a block of wood with wooden spools nailed to the side
but I loved it as I loved the threshing
All through the long summer days I would walk
the fields with my dog
At night my mother rubbed strong liniment on four year old
legs: growing pains she said, although one always hurt
more and didn’t seem to grow any faster
And the grain grew too, and passed me, and was higher
than I was. And then the harvest and the wonder of it falling
to the binder and the magic of the machine as it tied the
sheaves and ke-chunked them into the carrier
Then the stooking – little teepees covering the prairie again
and the golden warmth of everything
And the threshing machine; they wouldn’t let me too close;
it might eat me like it ate those sheaves and like the men
in the crew could eat, and they could eat
even when it rained
While I sat for hours nose to wet window
watching the great gray dinosaur
deep in the timeless mists
And hot clear windless days when everything sang and
the big belt slapped and the machine came to life again
and wagons were on both sides
and the big horses were standing strong and ready
and switching flies with dignity
The sun caught the arch or the long plume of straw and
the chaff lifting and the old hands fed the machine in a
sort of easy sweat-oiled rhyme and the new hands stood
on the sheaves they tried to lift each time
And the old hands laughed, and the new hands laughed
and they were men together
GRANDFATHER
My grandfather came to this country from Switzerland
by way of Brazil, working first in the kitchen of a CPR
hotel in Winnipeg. One wonders if he could have
dreamt that one of his grandchildren would own one
someday: perhaps he did, the pioneers of this country
had such a store of courage and of dreams that we may be
drawing on them still
And then to the prairies of Saskatchewan to try his hand
at farming. Prospered in the 20’s, replaced the packing
crate house with a large, verandaed mansion. Planted
ten thousand trees and created a special kind of oasis:
with flowers that bloomed all summer and fruit that
yielded sweet and tangy wines
Widowed early, he raised seven children through the
dirty thirties: Emil and Arnold and Walter and Werner
with daughters Rose and Ann, and Earnest lost at war,
who, so the story goes, appeared to him on his death bed
“There’s Earnest now, coming to get me with the wagon”
These things I remember as old family stories
My real memories are much more of the senses. The
senses of a 4 or 5 year old which seem now to melt and
run together. I remember not the man so much as the
aura of the man. The richness of old cheese and tobacco
the feeling of peace and the sweet rhythms of the earth
that surrounded him and warmed me as we sat together
in his favourite room so long ago.
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