Monthly Archives: December 2012

HEADINGS

HEADINGS

Hamlet was only mad north-northwest

My father
who also mostly knew
a hawk from a hacksaw
had him beat by a few degrees

Which you could quickly learn
by questioning his direction
at any point of the compass

Struck by a stroke
on the day he retired
he was never the same again

The left side of his brain
holds logic math and anger
all other emotions on the right

The man became a gentle artist
if he could have lined up lines
he might have been a poet

GOOD FENCES MAKE GOOD MEMORIES

GOOD FENCES MAKE GOOD MEMORIES

Slow driving west
down Saskatchewan 363

Paved now
but mud and gravel
fifty years ago when dad
came over from the home place
to help me build fourteen miles of fence

Half a mile from the old Fort Walsh trail
where the Mounties hauled supplies
for a starving Sitting Bull

A lot of history
and a damn good fence
still standing, still stretching
like time, and our time together

Smooth and endless
over the soft rolling hills

From this distance you can’t see
the barbs in the wire