The Old Mule

Gold Coin Wyoming. Beginning of a new year. Ranch

yard was busy beneath grey January --  hard land

now until Spring, Aspens in ice near the salted road

that coils toward town. A hammer of hooves, Jerez

horses. Crack rifle sighted into hay, lift two clicks,

right three. Jimnson down from Moose in hard leather

boots, Whetstone Creek raised, steady with a scope

and could put two through one hole. Men gather rope

and dust-worn canvas sacks, tomorrow north

by the Wise River into Bitterroot, Red River road. 

The cabin has been cold for a month, framed quiet

in un-manned repose. The women gaze out toward

creases in escarpments, see clouds and standing timber,

the cedars holding snow. They know the signs. Hear

the slow boil of winter stream roll around the barn,

set straight again out past the yard. It is all weighted

by the degrees of the wood's deep shadows. Everything

runs forward like the water. Up two clicks, down three.

Over rocks, around snow banks and logs. Hand on stock,

finger forward. Squeeze to -- crack. A raised saddle settles

in the muscled valley of a back, hand on leather, a bend

and pull: then up, stirruped. The west country is alive now,

and in white-still silence of January 7th, all the planets turn.   

Beautiful sky-full day. I have always enjoyed the crisp newness of fall. It is a good beginning, each turn. I remember sitting on a slope behind a small cottage-like home in Middlebury, this time of year, many years ago, a deep green fescue lawn beneath two wild-trunked white oaks. There was a river and a small bridge. You could see the university from the back of the house. I remember walking a short forest trail that was so inviting. It led out to a field, green grass again, and above was the most tremendous night. Looking up, I recall so clear, the sky was not the same sky from home. This was brighter, larger. Sharp and distinct in difference and color. I have seen other skies too. It takes a travel, and a new openness of mind. No adventure goes unrewarded. The world rewards those who go out to see. I keep reminding myself that my old years should be free of regret. Now is the time. 

Autumn Thoughts (continued):

Who is restless is not ready to give in. I see so many stranded boats, and it is hard to go about a day without looking for rocks and sandbars. Or maybe these captains are all looking back at me, bow wired in swamp vines, anchor dragging, not exactly making waves.

I flew over Amish fields yesterday, soon to be dark green in winter wheat. Plowed. Just sown.  Over the Mississippi river, strained all the way north, heavy with barges and silt. I sat quiet while geese passed beneath, headlong into the opposite direction, and looked at a young woman in the aisle seat three rows up with her legs crossed at the ankles, reading fiction.

It is quiet tonight, in the way a home can be when the cold sets on the trees outside, and dinner has been cooked, the work done for the day. A quiet of time slowing down. A tantric Hindu slowness of realization. 

I remember waking up in a small wooden guestehouse on Lake Aititlan, in Guatemala. I crawled to the bottom of the bed, pulled back the thin sheet blinds. There was a tremendous volcano in stance above the black-pearl-deep lake. A single paddle boat cut across this vast calm desert of water.

One boat. It is quiet tonight, but tomorrow I go.

It is time for a new journey West. I know a place right up near Puget sound that is the finest, most restful haunt a man could know. No bothers reside. None. One can pad about on pine needles, or sit out beneath the stars with a can of beer and not a thought to share. Make a fire, roast a bit of dinner. Sleep in the back seat of the truck, or lie beneath a thin sheet in goosedown bag -- no bed to share.

I like to share my bed. But with it comes a price. No man get's without giving. And it's not an adding game, so you can't go around picking score. Either you take off to the wood, or lie up amid the city. And no one wants the city alone.

So I think Seattle. Or Sinkyone. Or Missoula all the way out to Olympia. Depends on the trout.

I spent yesterday with a friend walking along 58th Street, right along central park. Wind cold and rain. We bought large cups of hot chocolate from a French cafe, and sat across from a statue of Robert Burns. I bet he knew how I feel. I bet he longed for a journey. 

It is not an escape; rather, it is a movement to surroundings which limit the suffering of the spirit. Who can look our modern landscape dead in the eyes and not suffer some slight wince? Have we not built ourselves out of our natural home?

Replenish or subside. I'm going camping, waking just past dawn to pull on cold blue jeans, wear my hat and find a walking stick to knock the spider webs from the path ahead.

 

It sure is nice to run across that perfect poem that says, in a better, more clear way, what I have heavy on the heart. This has been a day of riding upriver in a long metal boat with the wind directly in my face, and a night of anticipation for plans of unstudied adventure. What osprey finally flies, in the moment so close, has the sense to find out who is really who before departing. The wind still holds. I look closer now, and trust less. This is learning. 

Wild Oats

 

by Philip Larkin

 

About twenty years ago

Two girls came in where I worked—

A bosomy English rose

And her friend in specs I could talk to.

Faces in those days sparked

The whole shooting-match off, and I doubt

If ever one had like hers:

But it was the friend I took out,

 

And in seven years after that

Wrote over four hundred letters,

Gave a ten-guinea ring

I got back in the end, and met

At numerous cathedral cities

Unknown to the clergy. I believe

I met beautiful twice. She was trying

Both times (so I thought) not to laugh.

 

Parting, after about five

Rehearsals, was an agreement

That I was too selfish, withdrawn,

And easily bored to love.

Well, useful to get that learnt.

In my wallet are still two snaps

Of bosomy rose with fur gloves on.

Unlucky charms, perhaps.

unedited

This is the silent smooth floor

of the twenty third floor, and lights

lights all around.

 

Nothing to do again Sunday

but remember and work around

the house.

 

I remember sitting on the hard wood

floor with the music playing

and you hanging your head in a book.

 

Sitting outside in the small lawn

making a carved walking stick

for a girl, a brown haired woman.

 

I went by the old house

and the garden looks different

and my old front room

 

juts out and I recall the two a.m.

drunk driver crash into the side door

of the old neighbor's Pontiac.

 

That next summer I called from

the top of Arches Park, first time I had

a cellphone, Caroline’s father’s, and I called

 

the home phone and you were reading

O’hara or someone and picked up

which was damn rare, you seemed

 

mad that I was all the way out

in the back seat with Caroline

and you were in your old shorts

and hungry from not having

 energy to cook. Then Sortwell Street

where we had frozen pipes and the porch

cat who sprayed my laundry, and you sautéed

 mushroom ones night and we all

made cups of green tea and sumac,

and there was a note one weekend

you left on the table: Up To Saluda Visage Clear 

Come Up, right after the whole arrest

episode when you broke

in to the hotel just for a snack then

ran for fear of everything.

Two girls from Canada, or white

mountains, North -- I can’t recall. But I had

to call and wake up your old man

 

and tell him you were charged

with larceny, which I thought meant

you had burned something down.

 

Which you had, you had. Because it

was April and Ryan had died and it

was a terrible Spring

 

and now so many years past

and I just can’t believe the way you

left, just gone, one everyday morning,

 

after what went through and all

the shit we fought against but

quick into night, I get it.

 

How I miss you and your

hair of trouble and mischief

and always more real than anyone else

 

or just so you in every sense

and by now I see the path, how it ends

and wish it had gone different, but time's sealed

 

and I have a lot to tell you

and you would listen and laugh

like the tops of our homemade beer

 

bottles, yeasty rockets in

the kitchen underground beer basement,

or us drinking on the washing machine

 

of our girlfriends’ house wondering about

Rome or where we went next, with every expectation

that no one would understand. No one.

So we agreed to walk along the Green River

and decide how we would make sense of

things. We just never expected so much rain.

We never expected rain.

This was a special weekend that I will never forget. I feel many things now, and may some day learn to write them down. It is nice to be alive when everythign is aligned.

I don't know if my life I going right, but I have seen many things and known some fine people. There is change on the horizon, and an excitement of not knowing what will be next.

This poem reminds me of wandering through a Portland Oregon garden in 1994, wondering about a friend in New York, her hotel now almost home -- our secret journey through the park and a note we left, for anyone, in the hollow of a tree. It said: see you in the stars, my friend.   

--

A Certain Slant of Sunlight

By Ted Berrigan

In Africa the wine is cheap, and it is
on St. Mark's Place too, beneath a white moon.
I'll go there tomorrow, dark bulk hooded
against what is hurled down at me in my no hat
which is weather: the tall pretty girl in the print dress
under the fur collar of her cloth coat will be standing
by the wire fence where the wild flowers grow not too tall
her eyes will be deep brown and her hair styled 1941 American
 will be too; but
I'll be shattered by then
But now I'm not and can also picture white clouds
impossibly high in blue sky over small boy heartbroken
to be dressed in black knickers, black coat, white shirt,
 buster-brown collar, flowing black bow-tie
her hand lightly fallen on his shoulder, faded sunlight falling
across the picture, mother & son, 33 & 7, First Communion Day, 1941--
I'll go out for a drink with one of my demons tonight
they are dry in Colorado 1980 spring snow.