Tag Archives: Death

LOST AT SEA

Audio Recordings / tagged , , , / / by

LOST AT SEA

Uncles, aunts, old friends and more
all sinking below the metaphor
on the way to that distant shore

The keel hauling of cancer
Walking Gehrig’s plank with ALS

Hanging from the yardarm
of emphysema’s choking rope

The lightning stroke of stroke

The sudden iceberg of heart attack

The slow arctic crush of hoary old age

Or slowly sailing, deeper and deeper
into Alzheimers’ fog bound banks

There are a thousand ways
to get back to the launching line
I’m not sure I’m ready yet
to speculate on mine

THE FIRST MOTHERS DAY AFTER THE LAST MOTHERS DAY

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THE FIRST MOTHERS DAY AFTER THE LAST MOTHERS DAY

Slowly it dawns on Sunday morning
that you didn’t call nearly often enough
and didn’t send nearly enough cards
or thank her nearly enough

And even if
you put the cattle racks
on the big grain truck
and filled it with flowers
till it ran over all four sides

Even if you drove it to the cemetery
and dumped the whole damn load
on her single rose grave
it wouldn’t be anywhere near enough

SUPPER WITH THE PhD

Audio Recordings / tagged , , / / by

SUPPER WITH THE PhD

I sit across from my friend
and watch as he drowns
his well developed brain

Every day after work
he puts another million
brain cell kittens in a sack
and takes them to the lake

It is not for me to judge

This small death each day
may well have kept him from
the larger choice his father made

And a diminished capacity may help
when listening to the daily news
or hanging out with poets

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A BEAVER TALE

Audio Recordings, Nature, Ranch Life / tagged , / / by

A BEAVER TALE

The ranch hands found him
half grown and half starved
wandering through the hills
five miles from any real water

Rolled him up in a leather jacket
threw him in the back of the jeep
brought him home and set him loose
in that big slough north of the barn

And what an architect he turned out to be
building his house with cedar post beams
and mud and straw and sticks for walls
larger and homier than a sodbuster’s cabin

An aquatics engineer as well
every inch of his domain cobwebbed
with small rivulets to larger streams
to little rivers all running to his castle

Spill a cup of coffee anywhere in twenty acres
and he could sip it in his home

Mighty impressive and a good neighbor too
until the dry years came

At the edge of the slough was a dugout
where the cattle watered spring and fall
and mostly in winter when we chopped
a hole through thick ice and the cattle’s
weight pushed water to the surface

The beaver needed water too
and he knew what to do
dig a hole through the soft dirt bank
and steal his water from our tank

I watched the surface a long patient time
to see the Vee of his swimming
to shining brown of his head
and fill it with lead

My brother held him up, large as a small man

Life on the ranch is very simple, as was I
what interferes with living has to die
as a city boy might swat a fly

Had they gotten to me then
I could have gone to war