The Middlewesterner

The big boys
know what they're
doing -

let them slide
in the ditch
so you

don't have to.

"Are you going to
leave it like that,

or do you want
me to kiss it?"

*

"You sit in the sun
in some

small Texas town
until

you've had your
fill.

That's when
poems

come."

*

"I'm dying of loneliness
and still she's
unhappy with me.

Is that anyway to live?"

"How do you make your lines
come out so even," they asked.

"It's the size of my mouth," he said.

*

"If that's all you've got,"
he said, "I'll have to

make do with nothing."

*

"If I couldn't
turn away from

everything
I have to do,

I wouldn't get
anything done."

Winter tableau -
atop the windmill

crow and his
cold toes.

Shine of sun off
ice on the road.

I'm going the
long way home.

Eagle
in winter

above
open water,

beneath
the breathing

sky.

Rock endures.
Snow at the edge of rock

outlasts endurance.

Oh, fat crow -

sun on your feathers,
sun on the snow -

both of us
think we have

somewhere to go.

"I'd laugh," he said,
"if I thought it

would make you mad."

*

"Let me feel those
melons," he said.

"I'll see if they're
any good."

*

"If it weren't
for richochet,

nothing would ever
come my way."

"How do you
get there?" he said.

"If you make it
through town, why then

you have to cross
the river."

*

"I sure would like to
catch you," he said,

"in the speed trap
of my heart."

*

"I believe in stars, but
all I see is mud."

Foot of snow
or two feet?

No telling
what the wind

has promised.

Blue
pick-up

slide-tailing
in snow,

south end
headed

north
when that's

not what he
wants.

The river
winds, unwinds,

the ice as
steady as

silence.

Air too cold
to lift the smoke.

The day
pushes back.

The lake
makes its own
weather -

cloud
kissing water.

"Let's not even pretend,"
he said,
"that what we say matters."

*

"Those things," they wondered,
"why do you put them together?"

"They look," he said, "as if
they belong to one another."

*

"You never know
from where they come,"

he said, "which is
why you have to

watch the sky."

"How do you
do that," they asked.

"Like this," he said,
and disappeared.

*

"Why only two or three
lines," they asked.

"It is," he said, "all
that I can carry."

*

"Sometimes the ON
won't go OFF."

Slippery glass-going -
hold steady

where you're headed.

Blue sky and a burn
of snowy fields.

It's hard traveling,
both the going and

the coming home.

Okay, crows - it's
bitter cold and

still you play?

Snowy owl
or snow

atop the pole?
The sun

will tell me.

"You can go anywhere
from here. You just can't
always get there."

*

"I smell coffee
I do not have."

*

"How many of these
can you do," they asked.

"How many can you stand?"

"Words -
when any

will be
too many,

too few
will do."

*

How much do you need
when it's all you've got?"

*

"Having nothing to say,
I say it well."

A day with snow,
feathered but flightless.

Huddled masses -
geese on ice.

Wood cut for winter -
"Not For Sale" the sign says.

Their own heat, stacked deep.

The tawny
grass brushed

smooth by wind,
roughened

with snow.

Snow again -
the weather like

a foul mood.

“That's code, fellows,
for things I cannot say.”

*

“Let loose, O Lord,
all the spandex

in this world. Please.”

*

“The rush and flow
of words and
the lack of them.

Silence is better
than chatter.”

“Think about it -
all your words

come to nothing.”

*

“God lives
where death is.

Why pretend
otherwise.”

*

“All your wanting
comes to nothing

unless you do.”