Stones

Stones

Heavy, smooth, egg shaped

the size of an apple

thrust to the temple

Am I my brother’s keeper?

Five water worn stones

from the Jordan River

one for Goliath

four for his four brothers

Keep Your Chin Up

Keep Your Chin Up


When Raymond came home and told his wife he’d been fired from yet another menial job, that was the last straw. After eleven years of marriage, Elizabeth finally gave up. She decided to take their two boys, Sam and Mark, and go to Bridgeport and stay with her mother for a while. She threw a few things in a suitcase and told the boys to get in the car. Raymond followed her out and hung onto the driver’s door.

“It won’t happen again,” he said. “I’ll get help. I promise.”

Elizabeth turned the key, started the ten-year-old Buick, and drove away, trailing a cloud of blue exhaust smoke down the drive. The boys waved goodbye through the back window.

Elizabeth settled in at her mother’s place and got a job at Wal-Mart. In a couple of weeks, her old boyfriend from high school telephoned. She didn’t want to talk to him, even though he coached youth basketball and had a good paying job at the windshield glass factory.

Asparagus and Raccoons

Asparagus and Raccoons


I had to dig a hole for the coon my dad shot today. We’re sitting in the family room after a big Sunday dinner and he says, “Let’s go up to the chicken house.”

Naturally, I figure he wants to talk privately, perhaps concerning a grave subject.

We set out for the chicken house. He’s wearing his dark blue Dickie work pants and light blue short sleeve Dickie work shirt, tan suspenders and hat. He takes short steps, since his heart attack three years ago slowed him down. So, we meander up that way through the lush spring grass. He stops at the tool shed, fumbles around in the cobwebs for a while and comes out with a five foot shovel, hands the shovel to me without a word, grabs his hands behind his back like my papaw used to do, and we continue walking past the garden and toward the chicken house. I’m distracted, enjoying the warm spring day. Then it hits me, he wants me to dig a hole for a varmint he’s killed! I figured it out, but it’s way too late.

Compulsion

Compulsion

Every morning before daybreak

it's the same routine

me driving to work

down the gravel driveway

a slip of cold white smoke

that falls out of the woods

curving along the fog banked creek

to the distant highway

Killing People

Killing People


It all began the first time when my wife and I were leaving a popular eatery. We walked by a large lady sitting off by herself, and I had this incredible compulsion to help her. The table top was covered with appetizers, two or three entrée, diet colas, and salads loaded with cheese and walnuts and low-calorie dressings. I had to stop and tell her; something came over me. I shouldn’t have been staring at her. I should have been minding my own business. I walked directly over to her big round table and stood there shaking my head, watching her chomp. She sensed my presence and looked up at me

“Give it up. Get up from that table and walk out of here. Leave it all behind.”

The music in the restaurant seemed to stop for a heartbeat. She looked at me at first curiously, then astonished, then a mixture of shame and deep gratitude on her chubby red face.

“Okay,” she said. “Thank you.”

Right then and there, she got up and walked out the door. That’s the way it started.

My wife said, “What in heaven’s name are you doing?”

“I don’ know,” I said. “I don’t have a clue.”

Chickens in the rain

Chickens in the rain


chickens in the rain
running in a fenced lot

under a dark sky
digging in the dirt

fighting for a piece of corn
pecking at sparkles

waiting for the grim farmer
with the sharp ax

Red Tail Hawk

Red Tail Hawk

He sits like a king

on the other side of the lake

on a high limb

of a leafless sycamore tree

brown body, white bark

facing west, gray chest puffed out

soaking in the warmth

of the low afternoon sun

I have seen him three times

the first time flying low level

seeking solitude beneath the canopy

dodging tree trunks, hickory and oak

clutching a baby crow

chased by a great flock of wailing black birds

He flew over my head just out of reach

a forlorn look on his face

Smoke

Smoke


I wish you were fifty again
and we could go to Ellie’s diner
before work and we could eat
breakfast and you could smoke
two or three cigarettes and drink
two cups of scalding hot coffee and dip
your toast wedge into the yellow egg yolk

We wouldn’t talk about the plans
for the day
and the current on-the-job Admin idiocy
(since we’d left off fire fighting)
But we’d talk about that fire we had
on Mooberry Street and laugh about
John getting stuck in the closet
and the time Chief Cline
(the best officer we ever had)
ran into Plank’s Bier Garten
through a wall of black smoke
to pull the engine crew out
just before the roof fell in

Saddle Soap

Saddle Soap

"You have to take care of leather," he said.

"Saddle soap and the right temperature.

Body heat dries it out, cracks it,

breaks it like chicken bones."

His black hands, like leather, pulled at the

plastic armchair.

"Leather is expensive goods, it lives and breathes.

Not like this vinyl."

Little Boy

Little Boy


My first memory of a bird
was the time a stork lost its way
and landed atop the cherry blossom tree
down the road from our pagoda
just past the garden and the bend in the river

I was seven
a schoolboy dressed in white and blue
playing in the schoolyard with other boys and girls

Tone

Tone

For sometime now I have been wondering about the “essence” of a good poem.  What is the fundamental vehicle that the poem rides on?  I think this question came up while I was trying to discover the origin of a poem.  What was the impetus for the poem?  Usually for me it has been brewing for a while.  So what is it that finally surfaces from that brewing process?  I am coming to realize that more than anything else, the thing that really inspires a poem is tone.  It is my discovery about my innermost attitude toward a subject.

This is Poetry

This is poetry
(on a warm summer night Morgantown, West Virginia)


When I heard the learn'd poet
(author of many books, much acclaimed by the
literary world)
when I heard him with melodrama
and eloquence project his poetry
out over the auditorium
over the heads of the fawning MFA
candidates along with real live poets
and workshop leaders
(also, me, sitting alone at a table off to the side
observing literary scholarship firsthand)

When I heard him put van Gogh, Cicero, Themistocles,
and Dante's contrapasso in one stanza
and oft alluded to what I took to be various Greek gods
using complex imagery and gratuitous obscenities
while plunging headlong into the metaphysical

Gathering Poems

Gathering Poems
(A tribute to Robert Frost)


When you said,
“I shan’t be gone long.”
I knew better
it was time to gather
poems

You left in the morning
and in the morning glow
to pick spear shaped flowers
in a saturated meadow
to pick where none could miss
a thousand orchises