The Middlewesterner

“A tough business,
words,” the poet said.

“You can't get out,
can't break even.”

*

“All this,” the poet said,
“is not distraction.

It is the stuff
of what we do.”

*

“Patience,”
the poet said,

“isn't a terrible
price to pay

for waiting.”

“The question is not
'Why are we?'”
the poet said.

“The question is
'Why anything at all?'”

*

“The only way
my poems could be
more obvious,”

he said, “is if
I wrote them
on the sky.

*

“Success and I,”
the poet said,

“are not to be
found in the same

directory.”

The more
we endure,

gentler
comes the rain.

Clouds
in the west,
broken

as if a saw
has ripped them.
Sunset.

Light like fire
on the water.

Not geese feeding
but worked fields.

Late afternoon,
and now the sun.

I am so far
from home.

All the way
across South Dakota,

an unhappy wind.

“Cast your glance away
from our sinfulness,
O Lord,” the poet prays,

“and look lovingly up-
on our meager fineness.”

*

“The purpose of counting is not
the count. It's what the count does

when you stick it, like a gymnast
nailing her dismount. Life is that way,

a puzzle, you not knowing how
you got here, and no way out

except to find the proper count.”

*

“How do you
get hits?” he asked.

“You swing at
every good pitch.

That's how you
get poems too.”

“I don't know
what it means

either. I just
put it down

on paper.”

*

“I repeat
myself so

I repeat
myself.”

*

“Lift us, O Lord,”
the poet prays,

“lift us and do not
let us fall.”

Hoarfrost
on the trees

with dun-
colored

red-tails.
They are

everywhere.

All of a sudden,
a hang-down sky and
trees with hoarfrost.

Morning gone dark.

What I
appreciate
of winter

is its fast
vastness.

Wind plays tag,
has confused

the trees.
A pair of

red-tails is
undisturbed

by the comings
and goings

of mere mortals.

Dirty snow
crusted with
melt and freeze -

once again
morning has
promised us

nothing.

“Won't you shut up?”
they asked him.

“Likely not,” he said,
“in this lifetime.”

*

“Yes,” he said,
"I do some

of my best
thinking

at sixty
m.p.h.”

*

“Words,
like fruit.

Pluck
the ripe ones.”

“Can't
remember the beginning.

Don't
know the end.

Am
in this moment.

Am
again.”

*

“If
nothing else,

let them say
he was

here
when he was

here.”

*

“I put on
the mask.

Words
cover me

like mystery.”

Wind and snow,
a curtain at

the edge of
morning.

Winter
sun on
the skin

like
blushing.

Ice
on the river, and
something

dark
is stirring.

Cold enough that
sky is falling

out of the sky.

Oak trees
heavy with

hoarfrost
like leaves.

“Daily
I do not

speak enough.
I have to

practice.”

*

“Ragged
lines and

a strange
turn -

the slap
of poem

when you
need it.”

*

“Lift us, O Lord,”
the poet prays,

“from this grey
mass of sadness.”

“No, truly,”
he said,

“I do not
know what I'm

doing, but think
it's something

in the ear,
the hands.”

*

“Memory
is what?

A moment
out of time.

All they'll have
when you're

out of time.”

*

“The hell of it,”
he said, “is

so much goes
out, nothing

comes in.”

Last night's
winter fog

is gone
and the trees

are brushed
white, as if

they've touched
heaven.

Cold wind, yet
the encourage-

ment of sun.

Clouds in wind -
how like

the mountains.

Snow on the rolling
curve of land -

cold-hearted woman.

Snow, like
an echo

coming back.