Words

Today this thickened chickadee
Sung so clear and loud for me.
His hopping showed him in the tree.
He hopped with such an urgency
That there I stopped.
Gave him my attention quietly.

He led me on a little chase.
Plainly he had made his case;
I was to trod to every place
He showed. My foot trail interlaced
Where it had snowed,
And once more wore the winter forest flakes.

I thought: this friend must have some news
Since his, the better of our views,
Ought aerially reveal the clues
Denied to me by heavy shoes.
And I'll have spied
Just which of words divide the lies from trues.

I walked a while behind the bird,
The fresh air of the morning cured
The saddest things that knowing words
Can bring. He knew the pull of things he’d heard,
And knows to sing.
So he thinks, much like me, most words absurd.

Seasons

I take the sleep of trees in winter.
I pull it all within myself and wither
At the bark, but in the pith I gather
That which makes me wake in warmer weather.

I take the bounce of birds in summer,
To test this branch and flit to test another.
Wrapped and moved and seen all by a feather,
Singing songs to all and any comer.

This spark, what is this bit of magic
Trees and I receive when our elliptic
Has a hot streak? (hot, but always tragic;
Always to the freeze with every clock tick)

Hot resolves to cool, this much is clear.
Don’t they say it began in fireball?
And now, is that the winter’s shiver near?
Let go, you leaves and needles, let you fall.

Harvest Interruptions

Harvest Interruptions Pt. I: Inspiration

I’m always getting stuck in rhyme,
Even when I don’t have the time,
As now. The sun, its proudest shine,
Brings ripe canola I’ve called mine.
So I can’t spare this time for pause
Even for my ultimate cause
Of twisting on a rhythm’s bend,
My dearest friend. And I pretend
I’m sunk in dripping pools of rhyme;
They bog my swather, stop its claws.
Still, I’m sure my plants don’t mind.


Harvest Interruptions Pt. II: Broke-Down

I like that I know the look
Of 40 acres left
From a hill
Swathed in August green.
The prettiest hill I’ve seen.
Prettier than in a book,
Or on a screen.
But at the base,
And out of place
Is my machine
At a standstill.
This 40 left,
What to be done?
I thought this hike
Might tell.
It served me well
Cause this looks like it looks like.
The 40’s all
To cut this fall,
Out of the full half-section.
Wound it pretty close to done,
I reckon.

Harvest Interruptions Pt. III: Rain

Every season dangles by its whim
But fragilest of all is reaping time.
I’ve seeded through its spits to get it in,
I’ve danced to summer storms that black the sky.
I’ve struggled through a hip’s height worth of snow
To get to where it was I wished to go.
But in the fall, the rumour of a visit,
When you wonder: Is it not raining or is it?
Or the days-long after memory of one past,
When you notice how long fall wetness can last,
Sets the plants to drooling so the combine
Snorts and grunts to grind their bones to bits.
It likes it better (this preference isn’t mine)
When the sunny autumn days run one to next
And acre after acre is ingested
And its belly fills on grain grown ripe in sun.
When only skiffs of cloud appear and go
To act as canvas for the evening show,
When the sun throws yellow out to blue
And from that comes every shade and hue
Of purples- and of reds and oranges too.
It likes that and it purrs like it was new.
So it won’t stand for when rain falls,
Knowing as it does what dry is like.
It chokes and sputters, slows to chew and stalls.
It curses at the sky with puffs of smoke,
(Even the morning dew can make it choke).
But I can never find a disappointment
When its specks start gathering on the glass.
I think of all the thirsty prairie poplars
Or my neighbour’s cow’s brown crunchy pasture grass.
I’ve heard the reasons farmers get excited
About the prospect of a soggy spell.
They calculate projected profit losses
And say things like: This rain’s costly as hell.
But it seems the rain is rightly just the reason
(Along with sun and sweat and luck and hope)
That we have any loss to lose at all.
And just because it’s falling out of season
Can’t seem to make me hate the rain in fall.
If it’s just a teaser of a shower
We’ll plough through and make the machines whump
Around an autumn turned a western ochre.
But if it settles in to be a soaker,
We go until it gobbles in a clump.
Then puffing from the pulling of the plug,
We’ll gather around someone’s coffee jug.
And smiling we will say: Oh, this darn weather
While none of us can wait to use the chance,
We chat the ride home huddled close together,
To rinse the barley itch from neck to pants
To crawl into a dream of ripened wishes
And try to repay weeks of overtired.
The boys rush home to make their babies smile,
Daddy you’re home: I will be for a while.

Rain can build up on the edge of harvest skies
But never can a farmer hate to see it come.
He surely needs the time to rest his eyes,
Even if it stops the combine hum,
To sleep and dream again until it dries.

Building

I’m Building a fence that I want to keep straight.
I’ll need my line and my level
To set this against the impeccable gait
Of time. Pushed to drop up an entropic state.
The pusher, malign and malevol-
ent, never a-wait.
It pushes and pulls,
These angles it dulls,
Decaying from right to crude bevel.
I’d wish this: Stay plumb!
But I’m not all that dumb,
And by then, I’ll be through this one’s gate.

April/May

In and under, little ones.
In and under.
Carefully place you and wish
You all the best.
Days of sunshine,
Gentle rain,
And all the summer breezes.
This spring I’ll try
This once again
Between two winters’ freezes.
Press you in now
Tuck you under,
Cheers till later.
After summer
Then the harvest
When both we’ve changed.
When April/May seems
More months gone,
In dusty slanted autumn light
Then I’ll return to see you leave,
Hold you once to sift between
My palms and wish you well,
A thanks, and off.

The Warship and the Snowbird

Once there was a War Ship
Long ago in Ancient Greece
Ruler of azure Aegean waves
Men can have the shores and peace,
But it would take the seas as slaves.
There it ever undefeated floats
Strapped up to the harbour
Bobbing only ever up and down.
The Ship bides its time
Bowing to be admired
Mopped like a museum
Stale and stepped on
Slapped by the sea it beat
And always only up and down,
Retired and lashed to one place,
Sometimes it wishes to drown.
To end this wishing for the race
That with its mossy wood
Once sure to win now never could.

Once there was a Snowbird
Who exploded over Moose Jaw
And the country could not cushion
Him with either gasps or tears.
He left a life’s worth full of years,
That guy. They say he wanted
Only ever to be flying in formation,
Loved the wind so much
The ride was worth the riding’s end.
Then at his every apogee
A puff of errant breath to send
Him on his way mid wink
Mid glory mid stride and smile.
He tasted from the top a while.
But never knew the cruelness
That is time. Only the climb.
The sadness in this isn’t his.
It flows from those behind.

Causes

Cows make paths.
People make cows.
People make paths.
Paths make people.

Why it’s Important not to Daydream on a Country Road

While thinking on a riddle,
(I call them that because
It’s not what was not or was
But what maybe,
Or but what may maybe be,
And riddles are the same it seems to me)
I turned and drove down the wrong road
And laughed aloud at me.

Reclaim

It must look silly from the sky,
The farms that fit like children’s blocks.
Lonely strips of trees that line
The bits of earth we think we buy
Serve perches for buteo hawks,
Describe my neighbour’s field and mine.
For years I went to seed these fields
And tried to take from all the edge
A little more field from the trees,
Thinking of one thing – my yields.
Soon the trees were just a hedge,
The standing forest buckled to its knees.
Those silly younger years I spent
Ripping the iron into roots
To change the grass from wild to tame,
To sow the seed of this lament.
Look, now the tender aspen shoots
Attempt their former glory to reclaim.

The Cause of and Solution to the World’s Problems

I have a boot that squeaks,
It has for weeks.
And everywhere I walk
It squeaks and squeaks.
I’ve tried to guise my gait
To make its talk
Take a different trait,
Maybe a squawk.
But survey what’s around,
Just take a peek,
The instances abound
Of things that squeak.
Most in fact are men,
A lying lot,
Squeaking from above
A Windsor knot,
Showing once again
How good they're not.
Whether he be a dove
Or be a hawk,
The next leader to speak
I’ll throw a rock,
And try to change his squeak
Into a squawk.

A Walk Forestalled

Oh, you barbed wire
Hurry and rust.
Hold in your cow
Or kid now if you must,
But before I am dead,
To my blackest of dust,
Please will you expire?
Yes? Slowly combust;
Yours more to the red
In the spectrums of dust.
So what's this wish for:
Well, a wanderer’s need
Is not road-like; more
Like a grass prairie fire,
Wind-set in destination.
We neither pay heed
To silly strung wire
Pre- or post-oxidation.

Distraction

The spring sun thaws December snow,
Brings on the bin-yard mud. It plugs
My old truck’s nub-worn tire lugs.
The moment comes when we both know
That though it tries, it will not go.

I’m happy for the sunny day
Which carries on the warm breeze hope.
This year I’ll surely shape the slope
Of all my bin-yards so next May
I’ll need not curse a wasted day.