Prairie Boy’s
Springtime
©1994
I gratefully acknowledge these editors,
and the following publications, for their
support and encouragement, and for
first printing a number of these poems:
The Dry Crik Review
(a most wonderful and important magazine);
Riding the Northern Range,
“Poems from the last best West” –
Red Deer Press, publisher, Ted Stone, editor;
Maverick Western Verse –
Gibbs Smith, publisher, John C. Dofflemyer, editor.
CONTENTS
Memories of Three or Four
Winter in the Barn
Threshing Time
Grandfather
Black Beauty
Gopher Tails
Teacher
Grandma Brander
Prairie Chicken
The Lonely Men
The Crow
Farm Dog
Lady
New Hay
When you think about the Universe
Finding a way to see itself
And all the time and effort that it took
The least that we can do
Is look
MEMORIES OF THREE OR FOUR
I remember being nestled in that old ranch
kitchen, deep in the warmth of washday
Monday
The Maytag’s liquid sound mixing with the
gentle driving chugs of the little gas engine;
sloshing and chugging, sloshing and chugging,
as I curled up beside it in the great pile of
laundry, rich with the smells of the people
I loved.
Half asleep, half awake, I floated there. All
my senses safely cradled and warmed and part
of a rhythm and a sound like a heartbeat in a
womb.
WINTER IN THE BARN
Steam rises from the backs of big horses
The old Holstein in the second stall
shifts her weight from side to side
matching the rhythm of the milking
and flicks her tail at memories
of summer flies
Across the width of the barn
I stand with mouth open
in my biggest five year old oval
catching most of the warm milk
squirted dead eye straight
by the laughing hired man
In the tack room
kittens wait by a tin plate
to put their morning mustache on
In my memory it is always warn in the barn.
THRESHING TIME
I remember at Christmas getting a great toy 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 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 stoking – 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 grey 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 of the long plume of straw and
the chaff lifting and the old hands few 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 C.P.R. hotel in
Winnipeg. One wonders if he could have dreamt that one his
grand-children 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. Plants and
flowers never grown in this harsh climate, 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 Ernest lost at war, who, so the
story goes, appeared to him on his death bed.
“There’s Ernest 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
favorite room so long ago.
BLACK BEAUTY
When we moved to Grandfather’s old farm
no one had been living there for a while
and all the cats had gone wild
We found a litter of kittens
hidden deep in a corner of the loft
and among them
the most beautiful black and white kitten
Spitting and crouching under the eaves
she scratched us all to the bone
If I’d been a tree there would
have been six rings
Much persistence and we got her out
much time and love and we tamed her
if one ever really tames a cat
Best cat ever, adopted to our cousins when we moved
and one of the things we most looked forward to on our visits
was Black Beauty and her newest of who knew how many litters
The Tom cats in that town were also excellent judges of beauty
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 endless 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 new legs
It amazes me now
that as boys
we could take such joy
in their playful
beauty
And in their deaths
TEACHER
(In defense of
schoolboy crushes)
She was my teacher in grade four,
I fell in love for evermore.
Not a love I could express,
though with schoolwork might impress.
And so I spent my nights and days
In search of learning and of praise.
A flower opening to the light
In aching anguish and delight.
Then she went and moved away
It seemed life ended on that day.
Though looking back on that great year,
Not dimmed by time but made more clear.
I see that ancient youthful yearning
Remains as love of love and learning.
GRANDMA BRANDER
When we moved to Mossbank I was twelve. Mother would
sometimes stop us all from playing and send us over to see
her mother, who lived in a little house on the south side of
town.
We never really knew what to say to her, or her to us.
And never really until now thought about whose shyness
may have set that pace.
She was a nice enough lady and she gave us cookies, and
she had diabetes and a leg that wasn’t there any more.
She may have had grand stories to tell us, about her
family and childhood in England and Ontario, and
her brother lost at sea, and the tough times and the
good times in the west. And our grandfather whom
we’d never met.
What was he like
Were we like him
Would we want to be?
These things would have been a leap into total honesty.
It was a leap we never took. We spent the afternoons in
leaps more comfortable to us all;
small colored marbles over
small colored marbles
in the inscrutability
of Chinese checkers.
PRAIRIE CHICKEN
I came through the valley where the homesteaders had tried
to make a go of it for a few years, past the tin cans and other
evidence of their short stay trying to rust itself back into the
ground. Up over the crest of the hill where the Indians had
lived for centuries with no more evidence than the weathered
rocks of teepee rings.
It was spring and I stumbled onto what they may have seen
for years, the ageless mating ceremony of about twenty-five
or thirty grouse. They didn’t see or hear me and I stopped
about ten yards away and watched, although my mother
might not have thought it proper.
The hens ran around, heads down and tails high in
unbashful invitation; while the cocks puffed up the air bags
in their chests and drummed their challenge.
And they looked handsome and brave in their posturing and
beckoning and their readiness for reckoning. And the fights
were on, straight on and straight up, with spurs and feathers
flying.
It was vicious but pure. Not a cock fight for the amusement
of the bloody minded, but a way to see that only the strongest
would sire the little broods that would have to survive the
hawks and the snakes and the weather, and all the dangers
of a land where it takes a great deal of courage – just to be a
chicken.
THE LONELY MEN
Their little dark houses still dotted the prairie
when I was growing up.
They all seemed to cling to the soil as if their life force
had all been used up in the long and difficult
transplanting, and they could hang on
but not longer grow.
Or they stood alone surrounded by sadness and the small
and smaller markers of what had fallen
to the reaper’s scythe.
Their roots loosened year after year by the hot winds and
the deep frosts they became more and more brittle
until one by one
they broke off like tumbleweeds
and were gone.
THE CROW
TWO BOYS AND CROW AT 50 YARDS
TWO SHOTS AS ONE THE CROW FELL STILL
WE LAUGHED AND RAN WHOSE HIT WHOSE MISS
TWO HOLES IN HEAD
AS CLOSE AS
THIS
O O
THE LIFE WAS IN OUR EYES AND SKILL
TOO FAR FROM DEATH TO UNDERSTAND A KILL
FARM DOG
My dad doesn’t allow pets in the house
They weren’t allowed in on the farm
where he grew up either
Once when he was eight
the dog came in and up the stairs
down the hall to the room on the right
where his young mother lay dying
laid its head for a moment on her lap
and went out again
LADY
You could see her shine from miles away. She had a movie
star princess way of standing out from all the other horses.
Her rich chestnut coat always looked oiled and polished.
She had that inner glow that some people have and you
just can’t describe, sort of an abundance of life that can’t
be contained in the body and radiates from every pore.
And she wasn’t easy. She came from a line of aristocrats of
sorts, no one could ever ride her mother or grandmother
and her father had bucked in rodeos
My brother tried to ride her first, the place where she broke
his arm still hurts when it rains. Not a frequent problem in
Saskatchewan.
She bucked me off twice, both times for arrogance.
Once in front of my relatives from Oregon when I dropped
a rein and leaned over to pick it up.
I was off balance and soon off her on the hard ground in
front of the shed, and she did step on me a little too,
just to drive home the point.
The other time was a soft field where I was teaching her
to neck rein and making circles to the left and right. A car
was coming down the lane and I turned a little the
other way in the saddle to wave.
It was enough, I was loose and I was gone. She piled me so
hard and high that I came down standing up with the reins
still in my hands. Pretty good I thought and started to take a
little bow for the people in the car, but the lesson wasn’t over.
She came around full force with her back end, like Babe Ruth
with a baseball bat and knocked me flat.
Every morning she would buck for the first half mile, sort of
on ongoing initiation, earning the right to be with her again
and again. She would never be taken for granted and I knew
I would have to pass that test every day, and I was scared but
I always wanted to be there.
And I stayed with her every time.
I guess I had my fear to keep me tight
and my butterflies to keep me light.
As I partook in some small way in Alexander’s feast
and took my classics lesson there.
Only the brave
Only the brave
Only the brave deserves the fair
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