Snowy Owl

for Totally Optional Prompts

'North of 60', on treeless tundra,
abundance is on a four-year cycle,
from seeds and berries to ground squirrels

and lemming, three years of indolence
followed by determined breeding,
like the Colorado State class

of eighty-five. White-feather owls,
the lucky generation, hatch
into fertile spring and summer abundance,

easy living and carefree, until autumn
when the snow flies and necessaries
are hard to find, and white-feather drifters

travel alien distances like migrant workers
looking for food and shelter. White-feathers cross
the red and blue boundaries that show

on carefully negotiated maps, travel the coast
where dunes have a familiar treeless look.
Tired and hungry, white-feathers adjust

to a migrant's life, without papers,
and without the means to go back home
'North of 60'.

Butcher Flat Trail

Driving large from Hawk Valley
the trail cranks around Chimney Rock
and heads north to Butcher Flat
and it’s topcoat of sagebrush

free-ranging up Mahogany Mountain.
The early sun pushes warm
into the meadowlark sky, scents breathe
in every direction, Coyote lopes

past an old water wagon,
small clouds wipe off the bright.
The trail roams from ridge to wash,
then runs smack into a barb wire fence

and stops at a small black-and-white sign.
Coyote scarcely slows down.

Last Camp

for Totally Optional Prompts

The last white-crowned sparrow migrates
'North of 60' to an old nesting ground
and sings his Oh-My-Canada–Canada
to an empty tundra, no one's about

to hear but he sings just the same
to an ancient memory. It's after
the spring thaw and dirt roads
are dry enough to get into town

so Ted fires up the old truck
and makes his way out to the highway.
In town he rents a room and goes out
to whoop it up, but it's a quiet night

at Lily's, the whole town's quiet
since the troubles, the shut down.
By morning he's ready to fire up the truck
and go back down the road to camp

where the last white-crowned sparrow
sings his Oh-My-Canada–Canada.

Inner Mutter

You’re the world and I’m the small
murmur inside. Not to be weird about it
but I watch everything you do,
the way you tilt your head into a smile

when you walk, the way you hold a stone,
the way you hold your shoulders, the look
in your eye when a plume of dust
blows in the sky, the look in your eye

when you hold a stone. I catalog
what you think, remember what you forget,
the waitress in Westport, the motel in Burns,
the road to Honey Lake, pick up carrots

at the grocery. I’m the sound of horses
running at Santa Anita, the tractor pull
in Cedar City, Sandhill Cranes in the twilight
at Silver Lake, grosbeaks. I can tell

the way things will be if we change
the past, but mostly I mutter advice,
what to wear in this weather, where to camp,
which stone to pick up.

Black Pasture

Seven bellowing oxen swagger
to the pasture, settle in
to settle scores, large heads
hang low where mouth holes

crop grass to the roots.
Large oxen eyes watch,
the First Ox says
watch the neighbors

and tell so he can decide,
so he will know which calf
to scratch, which barn to burn
in the moonlight. The First says

tell when men come in trucks
to leave boxes, work cheap,
buy cheap, so he can protect us,
keep them from changing the way

things are. Sally listens,
I know she will tell the First,
Sally says she won’t tell
but I know. The First doesn’t say

what he is thinking, the First doesn’t tell
what he does, but summer rains are gone,
there’s a black pasture,
and we haven’t seen Sally for a long time.

Fort Hastings

for Totally Optional Prompts

At the fortress ruins plum blossoms
scent the royal garden's moss
covered remains, a small doe
bounds through decaying battlements,

tasseled banners no longer wave
over angry arms at the eastern wall,
trumpets and drums are silent, no brass
or jade decorate war horses.

Soldiers on the wind swept plain
are yellow dust, their quiet dreams
wave in the tall grass, generals
wrapped in purple robes sleep

in their hamlets under medals and ribbons.
All that remains is the deserted garden,
the plum blossoms,
and the old hatred.

Crossing Barriers

Soft rain all day, the sound of rain
in trees continues through the night,
in dawning light the river is high,
congested with debris, something is wrong

upstream, the ground is purging topsoil,
preparing to die, life shutting down,
high water is a contagion choking the river
with silt, the muddy invades bottomlands,

spreads phlegm, spreads the infection
through grasses, the bottoms protect
themselves with levees and ditches
which barely contain symptoms,

disease is not here, it’s upriver
where ground doesn’t hold a drop of water.
Upstream is the scourge, the canker.
A virus slashed through woodlands,

bare ground is stripped of trees,
limbs are removed, the earth is supported
on stumps, rainwater tortures raw wounds,
dirt is soaked and slides down channels,

streams are scoured to rock, a virus
crosses barriers, soil never returns.

No Place to Stand

Incoming tide crawls over the mud,
shorebirds are pushed from bare spot
to bare spot until there’s no dry
mud, no place left to stand,

the incoming passes the high-tide line
and floods sandpipers into the grass,
plover and dowitcher perch on driftwood
and old pilings, pintails go to the sewage

pond, pipits are on the airport runway,
a mixed flock swarms up valley
and gleans plowed fields. In the trees
there is no place to go, no refuge,

nothing but wait for the tide to recede
like a bad dream.

Thorny Branches

Walking a forest path in twilight
I hear chirps and burbles
through the bushes and vines
that wall both sides.

Ahead there’s a window to the tangle,
a break in the jungle space.
I move close to the break
and see through to water sliding

over rocks and riffling a pool,
gray fluttering in verdant brush,
a few insects swirling,
but no solid ground to step on,

no dry place to sit. I stand out
where the path is clear,
there’s room to swat flies,
where I won’t get whacked in the face

by a thorny branch,
under patches of open sky,
and the small stars.

Beachotine

for Totally Optional Prompts

The long, flat beach south of Westport
has a gritty narcotic that fizzles up
like ocean dust when I walk the damp sand
left packed and smooth by jade green waves

sliding in from the far edge
between today and yesterday.
The fizzle affects shorebirds pecking the gritty
for smallers, they don't know who I am,

they turn their backs, move away
and watch the gray layered sky advance
like a glacier. With no mind I walk
the waterline drinking fizzle in deep

until my step is unsure. I find driftwood
to sit on, breath slides in and out
like the jade green waves, and the shorebirds
gather in the beach grass.

Licking My Fingers

for Writers Island

The waitress at Jerry's refills
the old white coffee mug
and puts a plate on the Formica top.
There's a dill pickle,

and a grilled chicken sandwich
with bacon, melted cheese, olive oil
and tomato sauce dripping
down my arm. The last few bites

fall apart in my hands,
and it feels good.

Lone Ku

for one deep breath

sunrise on one side
sunset on the other
the moon between

~

seven sanderling
move as one
except one

~

from a plum tree
the fragrance
of the last blossom

~

going the wrong way
down a one-way street
to meet people

~

on Ned's Rock
a thousand nesting birds
ignore the eagle

Ready Money

I don't think back on the hard times,
the long days when I don't have
any in my pocket but I know how
to find a meal, and a ride

to the next job. Today my wad
of cold hard is small but I have
the plastic cards to get me in
and out of plastic eateries,

and the liquor store with a bottle
of Southern Comfort for Marlene,
who was born with legal tender.
Ready money rides in a big truck

and hauls butt down a dirt road
to the barbecue and beer.

April Hike

Waking to frost on my gear
I pack damp clothes with numb fingers,
and look for a sunlit patch to stand on.

Thunderclouds move over the canyon,
troubling the daylight hours,
blowing swirls of dust that stick to the damp.

As daylight fades I set up the tent
in a vicious swarm,
a snarling wave of dagger-bearing mosquitoes.

A pot of water at my cottage
waits to be heated for tea.
Wet snow falls in the sage.