THAT HURTS
I step between
the shed door and the baler
Just as my father
looking straight ahead pops the clutch
catching my leg in the too narrow space
between hard steel and hard wood
Hearing a scream
he turns, stops, backs up, and yells
at me for being in the wrong place
I am crushed
UNCLE BILL
My uncle Bill
up on the roof with a mouthful of nails
spitten em and hitten em
Before nailing guns and faster
Hardest working man I ever knew
It was hard to tell what Bill liked
but you always knew what he didn’t
He hated governments and politicians
worse than a man who wouldn’t work
I spent many a happy hour in his line of fire
while he spit opinions like bile coated nails
My father used to say
“A little hard work never killed anyone”
It may have killed Bill
Building cabinets at seventy seven
a blowout in the brain
and he fell like a sack of nails
I wasn’t there
it might have been the work
or he may have been listening to the news
WHERE WERE YOU WHEN
The story of how John F. Kennedy was killed
still mixes in with the story of how I heard it
Half a sentence tugging at my greasy sleeve
as I rush from the parts store in Moose Jaw
Picking up more on CBC radio in the pickup
heading west at eighty on Highway One
The urgency of the world waiting
for more news on his condition
not greater in a time of harvest
than my father’s anxiety
to get the damn thing fixed
and the crop off before it rained
The moment in time with Kennedy
succumbed to his head wounds
in a Dallas hospital
was lost in the sound of the combine
BIRTHDAY 2000
It’s the day before my birthday
and I’m working on a poem
A poem about how it’s by pain that most
people got all the learning they got
and how I’d rather not
My mother invites me along to visit some
friends of hers in the country
He is walking around on a cane
all stove up from being thrown off
the four year old gelding he’s breaking
Forgetting anything I should have been
learning from my poem
we put on his wrong size saddle
and I climb on to show him a thing or two
And I do, I show how high you can go when
you get bucked off backwards and rump
tossed and land hard on hard packed ground
how to jamb a shoulder and break some ribs
May have learned something, time will tell
one thing for sure, when I wake up the next
morning it isn’t like one of those birthdays
that just slip by
This time I feel at least a year older
maybe a millennium
GROWING INTO IT
Remember all those hand-me-ups
all at least two sizes too big
mother bought for you
You look like a clown but don’t dare frown
it’s frugal and wise so don’t roll your eyes
“Be careful, be careful please”
but you’re all elbows and knees
Before they half fit they all look like shit
so it’s back to the store to try it once more
and your behind is behind two sizes again
Childhood patterns are hard to break
Growing out of school, marriage, and every
job I’ve ever had before I really got it
before I was even big enough to fit
WHY NOT THE BEAUTIFUL WORDS
Why don’t we use just the beautiful words
Why not cast out a net and bring
back only those that sing
Why would we use the English for butterfly
doesn’t that sound like a dairy related event
Why use the German schmetterling
doesn’t that have a schledgehammer ring
Wouldn’t Italian farfalla, Spanish mariposa
or the Portuguese borboleta be betta
Why not the très French papillon
does it not taste on the tongue to you
like air and nectar and dew
Why don’t we save bats for hitting balls
and for insulation for our house
would it not be much more fitting
to flit with the fledermaus
Are there not a thousand languages or more
do they not all hold jewels in their core
Why not let the children choose
Are their hearts not our purest tuning forks
are they not ourselves more clear
do they not still resonate with all
they speak and feel and hear
FONTS
April is the cruelest month
to try to attach words to a page
they all want to be out and read
upon some bright and sunny stage
Mine are in revolt today, and say
Do not tell us
of the wonders of being in Times Roman
or that New York is nice in the spring
That Geneva has gold aplenty
that Monaco is a thrill
or the charm of Italic leaning towers
There is time enough in winter
to lie on and between the white sheets
Even then we wish at times
so badly to be heard
that we would if we could
press down so hard as to come
through to the other side of this page
and through the cover too
just to get to you
EAGLE BONE WHISTLE
Chain breathing with the Sioux
at a South Dakota sun dance
Praying that I might become
more perfectly hollow
That thy music may play
more beautifully through me
AFTER THE DEATH
(for Orli and Gideon)
These are the days of the rats in the cages
The burrowing into sawdust corners
the gnawing on bars
and the running on wheels
mostly the running on wheels
Even at night, specially at night
while God in his lab coat naps in the corner
and you know with perfect logic and insanity
If you could just do it fast enough
if you could just do it right enough
Like the wheels of old watches
all the cogs would fit the way they used to
when the good ones all had jewels
sleeping safe in their dark cases
And each morning you had to wind them up
if you wanted hours in your day
And you know, wish, know, wish, know,
that there is another way that this must go
And if you could just get the woulda, coulda
shoulda, coulda, woulda, shoulda; would,
coulda, shoulda, woulda, wheels
to mesh their gears just right
You could turn it all back
FORGIVENESS 3
You bit the hand because
you sensed the blade within the apple
Now you eat
from a tin bowl in the corner
What alchemy can change the taste