ALL RESPONSES |
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in response to the cow.
Millicent studied the tracks while
waiting for her bull to show up and say
Nice hat you’re wearing, can I give you a ride
to the city limits where you won’t be stopped for want of milk
or a country camera to capture your mid-afternoon shadow
as the sunlit sky clocks her energy for the next thirteen hours so
things don’t appear so
desperate, so foreboding
so black and white
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one small choice would be
should door remain open
or should window be closed
one bigger choice would be
to celebrate another morning,
clover and lilies, air like talc
wanting a choice is when
the day of death, its breath
soft as chinchilla on skin,
knocks at dusk, entering
to sad music of string quartet
you standing naked as birth
your only choice trying to remember
a world where once your only worry
was to find a place to breath |
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for this photo
The sight of trees,
slender trunks young and full of life,
branches reaching for the blue above.
A sky playing peek-a-boo,
giggling through the leaves
gilded by the sunlight.
The sound of a song reaches me.
Water happily gurgling,
gliding on shiny, wet stones,
scraping dirt on its way,
caressing, tickling,
the edges of a small river,
the grass, the low branches,
the exposed roots dipped in it,
as if thirsty, gnaw wooden fingers.
Peace is here,
among God's wordless creatures.
This, I find,
when I remember to close my eyes,
open my mind and awaken
in my secret place sitting on a rock,
or walking along a dirt path
in the company of myself
and my thoughts,
my wishes and my prayers.
This is where I come
to restore, nourish,
and protect my soul
when scared and lost,
is looking for peace.
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If it were me, I'd choose that sky
the blue sheet of Technicolor
with white wisps, and if it were me
a peek into the barn, to see if any
critters hanging out, because
animals are sometimes better
although I don't know that they're
really better than people
but they take life easier, more
accepting-like, except for ones
the most like us, that hang
in trees and gangs. Too bad,
because they miss the choice
of straw or hay or oats. Hungry,
they miss the secret apple
that messed up Adam and Eve,
that farmers hide in jacket pockets
because the horses like them.
Choice
means like and dislike, mostly—
that's where suffering lies.
Let's go on to the next place. |
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I hear long-legged ladies
whisper in the wind,
see them dancing.
They wave at me
to join them
in the field.
Their curls, turned from green
to blinding blonde,
attract me.
I read letters, sewn in gold,
fine embroidery
on paper-thin skin,
"Our lives, spent in sun,
bathed in rain,
begin to end."
Words already written,
they laugh as they
await the blade.
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Let us suppose, for example,
I am sitting out of the rain
in a warm place. And let us
suppose it is quiet but for
footsteps across a wooden floor,
the hum of the heating system,
an occasional voice. But there is
no child crying and no
bitter words spoken in distress.
Let us suppose I have come here
to find my mind waiting
at the end of a sentence, a line
of poetry that trawls out from my pen,
indifferent to me, simply
announcing itself as it must. And
let us suppose because of that
I can keep going, back to the
sludge of my heart paying
its debt for loving, always
wanting another way to be repaired.
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Boulevard maples chivaree my red sedan
with leaf confetti.
Today's steady rain plasters fall's mosaic
onto hood and windshield.
Driving the countryside,
I am stalked with summer's ghost,
sentinel and sentient against blue sky.
The dry brown corn,
just weeks ago green with promise, waving hope,
is still tasseled, but stiff and rheumy.
Consigned now to the anesthesia of frost,
the knife of harvest,
the stealth of fall.
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inspired by Cow
(revision, 10/4/2007)
dejected and world weary
i close my eyes
escape to gentle places
old wooden fences
golden fields
sweet purple clover flowers
lilac caves where
me and my sister played
hide and seek
midsummer
eating wild raspberries
tearing milk weed tufts
a monarch's birthing place
there was a swamp
at the bottom of the field
where cows drank
after a long day of grazing
the flow was always tempting
but i never stepped over the edge |
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She has wandered loose from pasture,
dropping her boa but keeping her spots.
But now she must rest. She’s parked
her arse beside a country lane,
to study her shadow or doze in the sun
on a lovely, expansive late afternoon.
She ignores her teats, aching to be milked.
An old cow, wise beyond her rump.
There’s grass to munch, that which she lies in.
Before nightfall the farmer will come,
geehawing her name with a git-on-home.
Her resume, her udder.
She who loved milk as a calf is fated
to pass its peace on to the world.
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for the photo Rushford_01:
The shadow at seventy, seventy, seventy,
is laced with powerline shadows, is scuffed
over the face by golden stalks, is thumped
by red-wings and pheasants, is beaten
once through the colorless head
with a ball cap, slat cross, and spray
of memorial flowers. My head
at seventy, seventy never sees
the sun, dizzied by the bending
of the light, the speed. |
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trees built for shelter decide wind
choice whispers through
infinite pine boughs
with unincorporated
thoughts, eyes fill
the grove's spaces
as
air between passing cars
black in between a white cow
dirt between rows of corn
miles between neighbors
the probability
of isolation is but something
escaped—and kept as either
all but one
or one but all.
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skin burnt black and wrinkled by sun,
cornstalk,
you are my grandpa
who made you, who made him
tassels thinned by a reaching grasp
my grandpa lost his hair—-tassels in hand
stooped by the weight of your gut
my grandpa limps with pain and potbelly
now you can't bend to view the sky--
what my grandpa didn't create
your soul should
fall from the dusty skeleton
instead of allowing combines to
judge it
so it may
be fed to the hogs
contemplating, may you sink into the soil
that made all
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beautiful is the field
filled with drying corn
eyes on nothing
unnatural,
only a distant house
drifting an afternoon
nap, filled yellow
sunshine, i dream
of Dana in another field,
giving way her shirt
to me in 1974
she knows
i lost mine to her
long ago
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Serve
Or
Control
Your outlook can lead to happiness or despair
Create
Or
Consume
Your focus can enrich or deplete
Give
Or
Take
Your actions can spread trust or fear
Crooked
Or
Straight
The path to wisdom can be interesting or brief
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in response to the photo Stalked
Mornings, still
uncombed smelly with sleep
riddled with dreams
she is stalked
by flashes of The Poem,
etheric lines that click and run
with what she wants to say
the very very word of it.
She reaches for a pen.
Nothing. Coffee’s
cold toast soggy
the muse has fled
leaving second cups
disconnected specters
stumbling earthbound thoughts
and one great desire to revive
John Donne’s ghost or
the ghost of some old writer
who died before the god of words
was born.
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He will surely
deny it, but
it was his choice
to dive, and deep.
He could have stood
there knees shaking,
toes curled, eyelids
half closed seeing
nothing but blue.
He chose to be
airborne. He chose
to be with her.
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From the photo Minneapolis
My Hometown
A french silk pie without the chocolate
Ribbons An ugly stack of dishes
Sky as blue as that of 9/11
That’s my hometown
I’ve always loved this view
Streaking into town from the north
The university unseen behind me
That’s my hometown
That glassy skyline standing
Guard against Dakota winds
Linemen staring down Canadian fronts
That’s my hometown
Until the view vanishes
My car falling beneath me
Around me into the river
That’s my hometown
Blankness, water, horrible sounds
Pain, screaming, sudden immobility
Just below the original mills
That’s my hometown
Coming to consciousness on the bank
Pulled out by a passerby
Who didn’t need to do that
That’s my hometown
Dozens saved watching a sudden
Volunteer army respond to need
Immediately unselfishly
That’s my hometown
The bus I saw a school bus
Relax all are safe because
Unbidden bravery goes a long way
That’s my hometown
Watching replays from a hospital bed
CCN getting details wrong
No one stepping in to correct them
That’s my hometown
Politicians swarm looking stunned
Offering silly pronouncements
While divers battle wreckage
That’s my hometown
Even George W comes around
Thinking 35 W was named for him
Ok, let’s find some blame ah, MnDot
That’s my hometown
$400 million to restore that view
The going rate for a roadway
No rebate, no warranty, no worry
That’s my hometown
I dream now of bodies rushing
Into perilous circumstance
To reach out, to aid, to save
That’s my hometown
No panic, no pride, no rescuers lost,
Solitary citizens doing the right thing
Because they were there. They live
In my hometown.
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Did he know a little girl
played Barbies, and drew him
pictures with dull crayons
as he left each morning
to the woman he chose with a yes?
She runs downstairs
wondering why Mom sits still in the rocker-
a darkness larger than the room without light.
She gets to wear princess pajamas
for sudden midnight car rides
through Minneapolis,
she and Sister giggle in the backseat.
Oh wait (nine years later)
we were looking for you
Dad.
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If only the immortal moved
or pressed lip
to the sting of remorse,
they would know
it’s as easy to suffocate on something pure
as something poisoned.
While the life of a secret
will never know its reward,
his confession
best hidden
near light.
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for stalks
He tells me his mother doesn’t leave the house anymore,
not without his father. That each day his dad plans a project
for her, then does it himself. He tells me
that when he visits, he feels like he's five years old. That there
is nothing he can do but trace the table’s edge, bite his lip
until he tastes his own blood on his tongue
until he remembers something funny or important or overheard
to tell her. He does not know why this is important, remembering
the story he wanted to tell her, the one he thought about
earlier in the week, the one he wanted to share with her. He doesn’t know if anything is important anymore, doesn’t know when he got to this point. He says it’s funny. I remember everything
about my daughter’s day. What she ate for breakfast (peanut butter toast and scrambled eggs), the painting she made, how she swirled the yellow and red and made the most brilliant orange, what time she
took her nap, how she slept with her check pressed against the sheet, her lips parted, her arms flung about. Everything, he says, I remember. And I want to forget all I know about my mother.
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As we walked down from Rushford
the land was smoke and mirrors.
An Amish carriage passed us on
the road to the river there.
When we got to Peterson
we stopped for a beer at the bar.
They were buying pitchers and pull tabs
and arguing the war.
As we walked through Lanesboro
the maples were in color,
the ash trees showered down goldleaf—
it was worth dying for.
But when we came to Preston
they were biking against the wind.
A storm blew over the highway—
we blew it back again.
When we arrived in Harmony
at the old cemetery
I said I’d like to be buried there
and you right next to me. |
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for Minneapolis
She puts gloss on her lips, speaks
to the me in the mirror, says, this band
is great. We have just met, are in
the small bathroom painted yellow with
too bright lights, of my favorite bar.
We can hear Erik singing, Steve on
the guitar. We can hear the steady beat
of the drums, the din of the bar. She says,
do you have a tissue? Then looks me over—
You don’t even have a purse.
She turns, looks at me, not the image of me, & says,
I could be in the most beautiful place in the world
but if I couldn’t sing, if there wasn’t music,
it would mean nothing to me. Put me in a box,
just a regular old box, but please let me sing.
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To accompany Stalked
Winter marches toward us
once again. Her ragged troops advance
in close array, banners flying,
armed with bright blue lances
of sky.
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with swords piercing my sides
I see the orange gobstopper
of a sun in my rear view mirror
leaching its color into the
insatiable sky
defying and tempting me to stare
back, a deceptive diffusion
burnishes the corners of my eyes
rendering the congenial merging of fast
moving cars completely inane |
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The lithe Io was changed into a white cow
by Zeus who wanted to hide her from his wife.
Imagine her soft skin turning to hide,
nose become snout, her eyes shifting
to the sides of her head.
Hera sent a stinging fly to torment her
as she sat in the many-footed grass.
Her switch tail could not deflect it.
She sat, the language of leaves in her head,
heard with magnified ears the chanting
of the sea in a language she could not speak.
The sea told her to raise the flanks her breasts
had become, to let her mooing fear drive
her over the cliff.
Io leapt, not knowing the waves would bring
her to another shore, that her lumbering, dumb
body would change again, that she would birth
the hero Hercules.
She knew death without knowing anything.
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I drive south on highway 43, looking for shortcuts to Iowa. The steep hills and valleys of southeastern Minnesota slow me down, and I begin to notice all the things around me. Oaks. Streams, not ditches. Hills, real hills, not bluffs where prairies begin, to run from here to Colorado.
Is this where I turn, at this bridge? A dirt track, it probably runs through the valley to the state line and beyond. It's time to find another way to go, anyway. It's time to go somewhere I've never been. So down the lane I drive, past river bank, willow, limestone and pasture. After a while, I stop. A cow blocks my journey.
I get out, and look at her. "Would you please move?" She gazes at me wisely, stupidly, partly knowing, and partly alseep. What should I do? Ah, a tuft of grass, pulled from fresh soil, should lead her off the trail. I find what looks like succulent grain, rip it from the earth, and carry it to the obstacle. I wave it in her face. Nothing. Now what?
I return to the jeep. Yes, a 2003 jeep Cherokee with 134,349 miles. A good runner. I start it. Honk the horn.
Bossie stares at me like a bovine Buddha. We sit there, looking into each other's mammalian eyes.
Eyelashes, blinking. Skin, twitching away the flies. A rushing river. Wind in willows and poplars. The sound of time passing. A cow, sitting in the road.
I turn on the radio. By some miracle of physics, the college station from Decorah comes in. They are playing "Brain Damage" from the album "Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd. The cow and I listen.
The lunatic is on the grass
The lunatic is on the grass
Remembering games and daisy chains and laughs
Got to keep the loonies on the path
The cow gets up, looks at me, and moos. She walks down to the river for a drink. I drive forward, towards Iowa, across the line, somewhere on a map. |
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In life we make choices
we have to live with.
There is never any assurance
that what we decide is in the end
the right thing to do,
if the risks we do not take
become the price we pay
for choosing the easy way out.
Sometimes what we chose to do or say
isn't what we feel inside,
but the pre-prepared answer
of our life experiences.
We chose old habits,
Instead of fine-tuning
our decision making skills.
We keep making the same old choices
over and over
hoping that one day
they'll work out for us.
Today I'm there again,
the road fork that unmistakably
presents itself.
The question is, will I take a chance
or keep on using the same old choice?
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