Homesteaders’ Cabins
Tag Archives: Prairie
GOOD FENCES MAKE GOOD MEMORIES
GOOD FENCES MAKE GOOD MEMORIES
Slow driving west
down Saskatchewan 363
Paved now
but mud and gravel
fifty years ago when dad
came over from the home place
to help me build fourteen miles of fence
Half a mile from the old Fort Walsh trail
where the Mounties hauled supplies
for a starving Sitting Bull
A lot of history
and a damn good fence
still standing, still stretching
like time, and our time together
Smooth and endless
over the soft rolling hills
From this distance you can’t see
the barbs in the wire
ALAS POOR…
ALAS POOR…
And we in this new old land turning up
with our plow
hammer heads, and arrowheads, and sometimes
a bone or two
and if one would be an uncrushed skull it would
be no Yorick that we knew
This noun, once verb, would mock us
in its grinning
all those with whom we might converse
are laid neath Hamlet’s soil
His redder kin scattered
like his bones
THE BARNSTORMER AND THE BOY
THE BARNSTORMER AND THE BOY
In the little plane, just the pilot and me
up up up into the prairie air
Climbing and gliding and floating free
high above the county fair
The town looked small from way up there
but hell… it looked small from anywhere
It was the changing people into ants
that I loved the best and wanted again
Being on the wrong side of relative bigness
had been causing me a lot of pain
BACK TO SASKATCHEWAN
BACK TO SASKATCHEWAN
After mountains piled on mountains
trees crowding trees and
sense sating cities
a cleansing fast of horizon
SHELTER BELT
SHELTER BELT
The job of the trees
is to stop the snow
If they wish
to turn green
in the summer
and play with birds
no one will object
LONG HOT SASKATCHEWAN SUMMER SHORT POEMS
LONG HOT SASKATCHEWAN SUMMER SHORT POEMS
Hay bales pile
the sun stays to watch
will evening come
_____________________
Plow breaks again
metal too hot to touch
will evening come
_______
______________
Girl in summer dress
more heat inside than out
fall is soon coming
_____________________
Beer is all gone
road weaves our way home
morning comes soon
_____________________
Sun rises at four
bones store summer heat
winter days are short
_____________________
Waiting for the crop
rain or hail, God decides
in the pub, politics
_____________________
Stopping for water
dry eyes turn westward
reading the clouds
_____________________
The farmer complains
gratitude too much like pride
outside the rain falls
THE FARMER
THE FARMER
The farmer stands on land so flat
you bend your mind over the end of it
to keep from losing touch with the earth
And he understands the simple honesty
that feeds more than it eats
While a crowded world crowds in
and a crowded sky send siren songs
to lure his young away
JEANNE MARIE WRITES A NEW BOOK
JEANNE MARIE WRITES A NEW BOOK
When it rains in Biggar Saskatchewan
a bigger battle begins
Grass and grain sucking straws
to the slurping point
The sun trying as always to extract
far more than its fair tithe
Muddy waters swirling down drains
of gopher and badger holes
Settling through hollows of buffalo wallows
where the buffalo no longer roam
Remainders feeding underground streams
and deep raging rivers
If I put my feet or my ear to the ground
I can almost understand her last poem
Almost hear the next one
A PRAIRIE VILLANELLE
A PRAIRIE VILLANELLE
If prairie wheels again had I
I’d chew the gravel and the air
with prairie roads to fly
I’d plume the earth into sky
to show them I was there
If prairie wheels again had I
Past placed where dead neighbours lie
I’d not linger, who would dare
with prairie roads to fly
Dust to dust gets in your eye
I’d look for other things to share
if prairie wheels again had I
Then greener farmyards I’d pass by
in mem-mirages free of care
with prairie roads to fly
I’d roll past all that makes you cry
afloat I sunsets clear and fair
in prairie wheels again had I
with prairie roads to fly