Iron Rails and Water Dreams
(for Paul “Wolf” Larsen) Born in a town where dogs were mongrels milk cows were skinny-uddered slaughter-house cattle, and farmers scratched out survival on gully-rigged farms best-suited for cattle grass, Coyotes, Russian Thistle and Prairie Dogs, farms where I stacked bales in haymows of airless barns, town where at Sunday Church I sat beside auburn-haired Shirley Franzen with skin so white and lips so red, I gave myself frequently to the Jesus of her fevered faith, even though I believed mostly in my father’s faith in his own two hands. At sixteen I believed in...
Read MoreThe Last Salt Kingdom
She eased out of a group celebrating a fiftieth high school reunion — her wide set and still blue eyes taking me in an instant back to summer glazed bodies swimming away whole afternoons at a bend in the Sandy River in John Yoakim’s pasture, where current cut a hole deep enough to swim, where silk black river bottom land grew dark green corn behind us, and wild plums in the fence row between, released sweet juice of rose colored flesh, sliding mouth to breast, feeding the madness of sixteen in a 1936 Chevrolet...
Read MoreThe Long Cry of Autumn
Blustery morning winds are driving low lying clouds and three days of drizzling rain into a gap in West Virginia mountains, and I walk my dog under an autumn sky so perfectly blue no words can hold it. I’d like to hold this moment though, the way my wife holds fragrance in dried leaves she keeps in a dish on her vanity, but the dog cares nothing about past or future, invisible center pulling hard against the leash — all nose now — brain gorged by smells far beyond my imagining, enough to quiver sagging lips of half-bark dreams he’ll dream in front of winter...
Read More