LITTLE BROWN JUG
My father had three sons
and taught them all
how to tie a grain sack, how to cut a calf
how to talk to a horse you walked up behind
so you wouldn’t get kicked or killed
Good things to know
but none of us are working cattle now
He played a mean harmonica
would that he would have taught us that
ROUND TABLES
He loved his neighbors, but not out loud
(Only by default could we tell if he was proud
men did not hug their friends or children then)
There were no women in the bar
and all the tables round and small
heavy with ashtray and pilsner draft
where they talked code till closing time
Politics of any stripe meant you are my brother
The weather, whatever the weather
meant I love you too
PERSPECTIVE
The ibis of OZ
has a very funny schnoz
Yet other ibises it seems
see long crooked noses in their dreams
REMEMBERING VALDY
Play me a rock and roll song
or don’t play me no song at all
I might not remember your name
but I know you’re a friend all the same
when you put the needle down
on that record by the bed
Everything that still moves moves
and memories come flooding back
Girls and cars and beer
as every year becomes that year
Thank you dear
HOW MANY PINS ON THE HEAD OF AN ANGEL
Twenty after midnight and up alone
sharing every Christmas past
with the angel of Austin present
alight on the well lit tree
Telling her of the first thin pine
strung with popcorn and candles clipped
back on the ranch before the power
Every crackle of every log
every crinkle of tissue torn
every child’s first Christmas
and every parent’s last
and every cousin and uncle and aunt
no longer as they say extant
Praying her to spread
her wings and wonder wide
that we may gather them all by dawn
MEMORY LANES
Once again in summer
where prairie blacktop ribbons
over Saskatchewan’s slow rolling hills
past grazing cow and half grown grain
driving on the road I helped to build
back when I was eighteen teen
five hundred years and yesterday ago
hauling asphalt to the spreader
in a truck hot dirty and mean
and eating steak for breakfast
with men of tar and grit
Still with a smile
each time we pass
a road crew at their work
The odor, odious
to you and almost all,
as sweet to me as youth
and lilac in the wind
TASTE
The taste buds
of the young we are told
are more sensitive
than those of the old
While there is still pleasure
in a snowflake on the tongue
it is more difficult to tell of late
if they have six feet or eight
RED RANCH BARN
Look how swallows thread the sky
B.J. Buckley
Watching them swoop and loop
from the window of the loft again
would mend some tears in the years
MODERN TIMES
Between the horse and the tractor
falls the shadow of too much light
Molecules molested day and night
and the milky way has turned
from whole to skim to gone
A FUNNY STORY
In the dream I say to brother Wally
you’re going to have to tell the story
or the milk I drank way back then
is going to come out my nose again