effort

he worked in the barn long past dark.

great grandpapa had built the huge clock
piece by piece- etched the very cogs from
blackened oak.

now cody repaired them.

the work was a deep spring of breath-
patience issued from the very task,
filling the dim cold with a moving silence.

finishing one cogs’ detail, he set it down
and looked up-

and there, sitting on the tractor seat,
a great horned owl,

watching.

sunbeam

the hills rust
with october leaves.

students buzz
about the cafeteria.

cody looks up from a math
text and sees a sunbeam on
the table.

"you find me everywhere, then,"
he says.

"i find you everywhere, now,"
she says.

the far country

cody drives his cattle home
through the far country after
the first frost each fall.

there in the desert beyond
shoshone buttes,
solace is found alone.

his head fills with urban
thoughts for the first week out-
until the desert silence drives
the peddlers from the temple
of his mind.

the high country is like that.
where the indian paintbrush
burns without being consumed,
there, too, does his heart.

sleepwalking

but what of the warm rain-
and the way of ferris wheels?

remember the apple’s
caramel streaked across your cheek?

how we smiled and laughed that night,
our hands touching more often than
friends might touch, less often
than lovers might.

i have searched for such a poem ever
since that would capture that moment and
free me from the bondage of
poetry.

i have found something, too,
inside each of thirty-one pebbles found
in thirty-two places.

unrecognizing the wind,
tasting caramel on your lips,
we go around.

fall

brother spinoza argued
for a sky defined by its clouds.

a whole science of sky phrenology
erupted- claiming to know
the dawn from dusk, gypsy
sparrows debated for hours.

while they twittered (for this
was just this morning, you see)
i looked up and saw beyond
the rising wood stove smoke-

rain.