Each stone fit into a wall of words
works across the landscape, holds
sweet notions close and chaos out.

A remnant seam along the draw,
where you saw rattlesnakes rise
entwined, kept the Bequette hogs

fat on acorns so their Durham cows
wouldn’t slip their calves, remains
after my father hauled smaller rocks

into a wall of his own. Only boulders
left, I marvel at the days and years
inched-out of the bottom with bars –

the deliberate rhythm of a heart
working at the edge of a moraine
shaping poetry to last a century.

indefinable swarms
on the outskirts
of my mind.

Rearrange
coffee cup
and ashtray –

stack scattered
yellow notes
and nameless numbers –

make space,
inhale
and write

like horses head-to-tail
in dreams washed
rhythmically across

closed-eyes.
It seems a poetry
we might emulate:

sweet diversions
to seductive places
that brush the flesh.

ribbons rising – lifting the purple cloak
of night into another Sabbath morn.
Without sound, it could be Day One.

You may not ever see it so, or feel
as forgiven – relieved of the complexities
coiled like barbed wire of abandoned fences,

old strands rusting years in the grass.
With your short clock, third day nosed
upon my daughter’s breast – you feel it now

waking in and out of shapeless dreams
you’ll paint yourself in time – in times
where space alone may not be enough

to let the day dawn upon you –
or let the gloaming ride into starlight
with all the endless universes beckoning.

A distant mower finds a bone.
Pelicans glide in and out of gray
while a battalion of white wedding chairs
stares emptily into the fog, a carpet
of rose petals browning on the lawn.

A murmur of words at the saddle rack –
an easy mind’s awakening in the dark
before the first light of fearful news
spreads into summer heat by afternoon.

A good horse listens well, drops an ear,
scoops the sound of breath and heartbeat
from the mantra of familiar words
for their meaning at the moment.

Finding inconsistencies easy to spot,
even cows can tell you what you don’t
truly want to know about yourself
crossing the wild range of their eyes.

Once I grinned at old men in dented pickups
rising early to feed a dozen, fat cows –
watched them cling to the tailgate, anything
to keep their balance and to stay upright.

                                                  - for E.J.

a tree frog lives in the dark overflow
of the new bathroom basin, perches
on its ceramic edge when the faucet runs,

then leaps to the higher ground
of towels draped loosely in the corner
to watch me brush my teeth. Sometimes

he explores beyond the door looking
for someone, but quick to retreat
to the sink, his home. Even the smallest

have dominion woven with man’s – and we
each bear the weight of the sky like ants
in a world without coincidence. The Red Tail

greets the 4-wheel drive with a low glide,
recognizes hay truck from the rare hunter’s
loud gunshots and the flutter of crippled quail.

Clarence Holdbrooks at the gate.

Thanks Sam!

a slow soaker, shirt
matted to the flesh, that
bare-chested feeling
reborn again – even

spun in summer’s clutch
of dust and drought.
No urgency or rush
to that last embrace

when winter waits
for everyone, each
moment counts
like drops of rain.

Robbin’s collarbone seems to be healing well. Shorthanded without her, and Chuck on another fire in Napa, Clarence and I have enlisted my son’s help. We’re tickled with his youthful humor.

But nothing like a fever to take you down a notch or two, or undermine delusions that we Americans have the inside track on good management decisions, both political and business, but Roger Cohen’s Op-Ed piece in the New York Times (June 2, 2008), “The World is Upside Down” is the ‘tailor bob,’ the end of the thread that most Americans cannot yet wrap their minds around. Link: (copy and paste)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/02/opinion/l02cohen.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=