Getting to Yellowstone

 

Getting to Yellowstone

Breakdown in Idaho so I walk with little Lily 
to a hovel of a house where Lily says 
“This doesn’t look like a happy place to live”
because she wonders about such things. 

A woman’s voice “¿Quién?”
I explain with gestures we need a phone 
if she has one. Door opens. Cautious, wordless,
face sweaty-slick, she lets us enter.
An ancient dial phone on the wall. 
Lily says “We’re safe here.”

Tow driver Ethan crams Lily and me 
into his cab, cool toward us until Lily 
clutching a book, always a book, asks 
“Would you mind towing us to Yellowstone?” 
Then he smiles. We chat.

Ethan’s from Oakland, California
so I ask why he’s in potato land.
“I prefer the slow life,” he says
but his wife doesn’t so she has a job in LA.
Lily says “How will you have children?”
Ethan laughs. “Slowly” he says.

Lily and I set up a tent in Ethan’s back yard.
Awaiting repair we read Mr. Popper’s Penguins 
by the Snake River where penguins don’t dwell
but might find ice-cold water. I tell Lily 
we’ll reach Yellowstone by and by. 
“No hurry,” says Lily. 

…..

First published in Hobo Camp Review 
Thanks to James Duncan, editor
Photo by Jacob W Frank

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Private Parts, Private Thoughts

 

Private Parts, Private Thoughts

Terry comes over for our Tuesday walk.
He bruised his leg pretty bad 
going down some rocks on his motorcycle 
so we don’t climb any mountains today, 
just walk the roads and talk about private parts, 
the concept we impose on children
who are born without privacy 
until we lay down the law at some point 
for their safety, our comfort, society. 

Terry was seventeen in Cincinnati, 
she was fifteen and curious, 
they shed privacy together 
for an entire summer.
I remember skinny-dipping 
on a sandbar of the Meramec River 
in Missouri with friends, 
private parts flopping, wet,
the same summer as Woodstock, 
I guess it was something in the air at the time,
never expecting fifty-six years later 
to be homeowners with SUVs, 
old hippies with grandkids, 
reminiscing. One of the Meramec girls,
Debbie, died in a car wreck a month after.
I still recall her breasts slick with the river,
upright, untasted. 

We each are wearing broad-brim hats, 
canvas sombrero for Terry, 
funky fedora for me, 
and we wonder about the lost custom 
of tipping one’s hat to a lady, so we try it, 
tipping “Howdy ma’am” 
and then simply “Ma’am” 
like the laconic cowboys of old movies
as we arrive at the pond in the center of town. 

Suddenly we both share a glance,
something in the air. Strip our clothes,
keep the hats on. Wade into the pond.
Cars drive by but nobody stops.
Fish, bullfrogs make way.
A great blue heron takes flight.
Squishy mud between our toes,
simply wading. Glory. Hot day.

Still wet, we pull our pants on.
A sheriff’s deputy stops his cruiser,
leans, lowers the window,
says there was a complaint,
two old men naked in hats,
personally he doesn’t care but
the young mothers seem the most upset, 
what if the children saw?
“Haven’t seen any,” we say,
“but we’ll keep a watch.”
We tip our hats to the officer
and walk home with our private thoughts,
mine of greeting Debbie still a young lady
in heaven. Howdy, ma’am. 

…..

First published in Sheila-Na-Gig  
Thank you editor Hayley Mitchell Haugen

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Quarter Acre

 

Quarter Acre

In my undeveloped lot
you can walk a trail 
formed by hooves, 
by generations of deer 
followed (but rarely)
by pawpads of lions.

In my undeveloped lot
quail warm their eggs
in nests of woven grass
or gather a kindergarten 
of bustling chicks.

In my undeveloped lot
grow oceanspray, hazelnut,
snowberry, thimbleberry, 
elderberry,  blackberry,
coffeeberry, currant, 
a buffet for songbirds 
who gather and gossip.

In my undeveloped lot
stand trees of straight fir, 
patient redwood, generous buckeye, 
scented bay, calm cypress, 
rock-hard oak, big-leaf maple
where squirrels scamper, raccoons doze, 
fox and skunk and possum wander
while crows call, vultures perch, 
where owls call to the stars.

In my undeveloped lot
a lot has developed.

…..

First published in The Russell Streur Anthology

Photo is of my undeveloped lot. The ladder (which I built) has been there 40 years. Nobody remembers why.

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Beauty is your death beheld

 

Beauty is your death beheld

This mountain in the rising sun, 
these waters home to loon, 
these pines pulsing with sap,
this handful of berries wild and blue, 
all this and more your body shall become, 
all this and more your spirit shall join. 
Behold the glory you shall be.

…..

First published in Northampton Poetry Review 
Tom Harding editor

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