FIRST ART PROJECT
It took a long time to pound
a whole keg of brand
new spikes
into the hard ranch yard
A silvery path
paved with shining heads
danced bright in the prairie sun
I stood back young and strong
and proud and knew
that it was beautiful and good
My father thought he had to teach
There was no room for art
in a hard yard
in a hard world
It was a long time before I tried again
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 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 legs
It amazes me now
that as boys
We could take such joy
in their playful
beauty
And in their deaths
THRESHING TIME
I remember at Christmas getting a great 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 the 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 stooking – 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 gray 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 or the long plume of straw and
the chaff lifting and the old hands fed 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
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
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 she to us,
and I never really until now thought about whose
shyness set that pace.
She was a nice enough lady and gave us cookies, and
she had diabetes and a leg that wasn’t there anymore.
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
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
Through 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
WINTER IN THE BARN
Steam rises off 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 milk
squirted dead eye straight
by the laughing hired man
In the tack room
kittens wait by a tin plate
to put their morning moustache on
In my memory it is always warm in the barn
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 sounds 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