Kansas

This land.
It suits me,
gloves my hands in dirt(soil,
earth, loam, terra firma)
shoes my feet ,
roots them,
entangles them in a weave
of Timothy, buffalo, blue stem,
bottlebrush,, and foxtail millet:
a living body suit.

I grow upon the horizon.
The wind tosses the chaff.
Stalks of hair and I morph to the wind.
A machine, giant upon the hills.
Ancient energy for a 21st century time.

II

A garden
of wild onion,
earthy tastes
on a baking summer day.
Cactus hidden in buffalo grass,
snares the bare feet.
Sandburrs jab , bring blood to a child's foot.
Devil's claws hook and pin into denim bottoms and bobby socks.
Tumble weeds caught in barbs and fried on electric fences.
All created to keep me here
in mind, in soul, in imagination...


III
In this garden
Adam would have named the flower "sun"
and Eve would have reached for a wild plum.
Walking in that garden
there'd be no bushes
to hide behind;
just tumbles of weeds
blowing across the grass.
God would call upon the wind
to sweep the hidden
horizon
to unearth
fleeing man and woman...

The snake would rattle with his lies,
and the woman would crush his head
against a rock.
A rock that would stand
never fall,
a limestone wedge planted in the earth.

never fail..

to be continued....

Nebraska/Kansas

Nebraska
Part I

The Platte’s muddy
Ribbon, twists,
Braids, plaited
With trees that suck
The life, the water,
from the river.

The “divide” (a?)
Between Little Blue
And Republican Rivers:
Cather’s land.

II

Soybeans, squat, bushy.
Corn majestic tall.
Both in a blue bowl sky.
Pivots of water
Puddles and pools,
where cows come to stand.
Rolls. (Rolling?)
Into Kansas.
Prairie becoming a cultivated carpet.
A land I can shrug on,
Glove my feet,
Root them in blue stem
And buffalo grass.

Kansas III
If I “can’t go home again”—why
Do I feel so alive?
Under endless sky?
Wind that whips
Yet caresses and wraps its arms around my body.
Rhizome, planted
To keep me still.
A voice wakes me.
Why do I undulate?
my emotions like the limestone
struggling to break
through the surface
of the humps of hills.
(the ocean underneath the waves)
Once when I was a child
I held a seashell
found lying in a cow pasture.
White as the cumulous clouds
Stacked in the east.
I marveled at its placement
Without a present sea.


If all I am
Is formed by 15
Can the mountains
Ever take the place of sky?

Why do I fight?
To twist, twine myself
In the grassy earth?
Will my skin
Flake off like chips
Of limestone exposed
By the cut of the road?
Are the scars of my life
Imprinted like the fossil shells
On limestone fence posts?

IV

I can’t be the fence
I can’t keep the barb sharp
The electricity
Cannot flow.
It will keep rolling
Heaving past
The telephone lines.
The prairie surges,
Swells fecund,
Fructiferous,
And I can’t ask myself
“Can the mountains ever take this place?”


V
I am hot-wired
To these forsaken farms.
Barns slivered gray, collapsing
Inward, to let the sky fall over them.
The roads dwindle to grass,
Velutinous over earth.

Dusty toes leave tracks
In the earth
Like dinosaurs left tracks in limestone rock.
The puddles from thunderstorms
The night before vaguely brings to mind
some other timely tragic
upheaval.
(Seas sucked to ground and sucked up to heaven)


To be continued….

teenager

"You weren't invincible when you were a teenager, you were just stupid." 19 Minutes by Jodi Piccoult

Drunks

"A drunk man's words are a somber man's thoughts."

Disequilibrium in Math

I craft pictures.

to stop panic.

Circles for cookies
Tallies for numbers
Surreptitiously
noticing the paper
next to mine.
verbs, numerals, nouns,
numbers.
Rational. Irrational.
Integers. Imaginary.
Gobblygook.

I hang my hair
to hide my tears.

DAMMIT I hate math,
Arithmetic, algebra, fractions,
decimals.
Thank God Percents
were hiding elsewhere on the number line.

HER algorithm marches
proudly across the page,
Triumphant in victory!
Conquering numbers with a pencil.

My x + 2 =/x +3

My numbers slump,
slid off the page,
disappearing lead,
wrapped in shame.

I never thought,
just never realized,
how much I could HATE
the alphabet.

Stabbing my ABC's,
skewering them with a pencil.
a(x +b) =

they murdered "a" for me.
they fenced it with parenthesis,
caged it with an "x".

Flee or fight.
I can't get past.
They pound like jungle drums
in my brain.
Blockade my synapses.
Hold hostage my dendrites.

II

For sum
the numbers tease and dance
with glee across bridges.
Waltzing, skip counting,
across the neocortex.
For sum being
hardwired, forged in whole numerals,
in the frontal cortex.
(the right side of the parietal lobe)
a crown.

Others see numbers
as a collapsing bridge,
misfiring,
sending smoking trails,
hiding paths.
that don't exist in brain.

III

Making Sense

The nose is raw,
eyes cried out
Embarrassed at the anger,
The challenge to apologies,
Persevere in humiliation.
Admit the raging pride.

(where I hid behind a "let it be" tree and stared at fences.)

To find pieces of numbers,
lurking in gray matter.
Unbidden crossings,
blurting out,

"It would all be prime".

(And where did that come from?)

What zapped?
charged, transformed,
uncloaked that thought?

Stamina.

Perseverance.

The square numbers 2
reconciled.

Found closure.
Identity; Inverse
with my imaginary
friend.

Closure.

If numbers can be composed/
decomposed,
Can life be living on a number line?

Medford, OR

Lindsborg

The ceiling cracked, dingy yellow.
Main street outside the window
Interrupts the quiet we created.
The silence of a misplaced word in touch.
An hour lost in our feeling
What was said,
Never repeated,
never heard.

Held so closely,
Distance in mind.
Culmination of all thought,
Distant in composition.
My words and your art
You said could never mix.

Yet in this room,
For this hour,
With nothing said,
We captured a moment
That merged.

Where the bits of my words
And the pieces of your art,
Formed an embrace,
Never repeated,
Never heard,
Never talked
About.

Circa 1978?
Lindsborg, KS

Bitter Brew

"Bitter Brew"

Ah -- the bitter brew
this morning - a touch of pleasue mixed with acrid bile.
Contemplating Socrates this morning - mixed with a bit of Wordsworth. Then perhaps some Hardy or Hopkins - though I seem to long for Emily.
Still I sipped it slowly savoring the taste.
I let it flow down my throat - ignoring my stomach.
There I sat nibbling on my thoughts, chewing on my emotions.
Yet only liquid seems to allow itself to be swallowed.
So I lit up another smoke
Bitter air, bitter brew.

circa 1979

Snow Lightening

Snow lightening:

A child at rest
When is that?

A show and tell of treasures
Mostly worn
Tattered bunnies
Clever gorillas
“Where did you get it?”

I run the referee
My hat, my book
McDonald’s fun toy.

The stutter who needs
To talk, can’t talk, tries
To talk….

My words…
“You need to calm down.”
And a thumbs up
To a child who drives me crazy everyday.

I love the children's show
And telling their AR books!

Playing teacher, grown ups,
Then rolling in circling giggles on the carpet….