Like many other twelve year old boys with thoughts of rock star status, I too dreamed of such things as I taught myself to play my sister’s guitar. Unfortunately, I was too much a lover of acoustic music to make much of a run at the smoke and sweat-filled tour bus mystique. I was too bookish, intense and eclectic to fit nicely into most single strata rock bands. And, perhaps most importantly, I was far too afraid of girls for the groupie thing to ever be an issue. But I love the instrument. I love the sounds it makes. I love when those sounds and the instrument meet together at the insistence of my own probing hands. This is a short poetic tribute to a favorite instrument of mine…and apparently many others.

* * * * *

Like hand and Hand stretched across a Renaissance ceiling,

hand meets hand in effortless motion,

too lithe to care what darkness inspires this happy tune.

Finger kisses finger just far enough apart to spike the yearning.

From whence come these doleful sounds,

these cries of joyful anguish?

They twist and writhe, competing for space

and steal the air with deft amusement.

From careful pause, adroit motion, and artful thrust

come strains unstrained; music feigning perfection, deigning imperfection.

Yet still it comes, music for ears made perfect –

singed,

soothed,

satisfied.

I was concerned at first that this one sounded a little too much like a contemporary country song lyric. But, on second thought, those rough ‘n tumble folks whose lives are lived in the often harsh and unforgiving collision of disciplined ranch life with a relentlessly greedy marketplace do live lives not unlike a rhyming song.

 

Cowboys, fiddles, flapjacks and boots,

fossilized farm tools, rust in the roots.

Breakfast at dawn, now to welcome the day,

well before coffee, the horses get hay.

_____

Dog’s on the porch nearly losing his mind,

barking insistently trouble to find.

As the last ranch hand has loaded the truck,

sisters and mothers got cobbed-corn to shuck.

_____

‘Sbeen twenty years since this place has made money,

nor a vacation for he and his honey.

The kids have been patient and never complain,

despite hand-me-downs nigh as wore as the train.

_____

When dinnertime comes and they sit at the table,

hands clasp in prayer, ‘cause their faith ain’t no fable.

Then Papa prays words that they all know so well,

and they gratefully dine till their bellies are full.

_____

Mom still can sing and has music to spare,

for six tired children too weary to care.

Through notes sung with love lives a heart touched with grief,

for this place to survive there must soon come relief.

_____

And when the day’s ended and covered in sweat,

a dog-tired sun not yet ready for bed,

succumbs to the weight of a perfect, round moon,

till daylight returns a few hours too soon.

_____

If you think this here’s the end to this tale,

kindly don’t think that these good folk will fail.

There’s plenty of hope in their hearts to go round,

‘cause this is ranch life, where the lost can be found.

Rosebud, Alberta is a tiny hamlet of less than 60 people. However, during the year it boasts thousands of tourists who come through its rustic, historic streets to browse, shop and enjoy the museum, mercantile, art gallery and dinner theatre. I worked here many years ago. It remains one of my favorite places on earth. Visit sometime…you’ll understand why.

This deceptively sleepy town,

like an anthill grows ever busier with proximity.

I shove an itchy, needy nose deep

into her business and am rewarded

with friendship’s long embrace.

Her longer history kisses my eager self

with the open mouth of years and paint-peeled time,

the salvaged montage of a community’s coming and going.

_____

Akokiniskway, river of roses,

how quietly you drag yourself along

and leave nary a trace

but birch, poplar, ducks and deer

to share this sojourn.

Your listless demeanor belies your

curious purposes, sometimes lost from sight

but never from memory.

Hallowed, leaning light caresses these hills,

parading their greens and haunted haunches

with souls of soil-soled shoes,

long lost from this place.

_____

Mercantile, full of this and that,

the brick-a-brack of bent and browsing tourists,

their interest in what to take, not what’s left behind,

still less what lies ahead.

_____

Gazing through the bent and mottled glass

of this old hotel window,

these crooked, slanty floorboards

joke with me and, together, we await the 12:03 train,

C.P.R.’s gift to unity and boyish dreams.

_____

Today, my pen sings a ready song,

ripe with thoughts of tomorrow’s day before this one –

a union of then and thence,

where and wherefore.

Ink and paper kiss to re-member

and reminisce in rose-colored, glossy touch of summer.

_____

Here, I wrap her in rapture and nuance

and concentric circles of time,

and time,

and shoes worn thin,

still walking these prairie shores, these river valley roads,

Alberta’s broad bosom, face of flush-ed,

rose-pocked cheeks.

_____

Kiss them, I say.

Steal from her what she readily gives and, together,

we’ll sing.

As a boy I would complain whenever we made the endless journey east of Calgary across Canada’s bread basket. A featureless, forever stretch of nothingness with, well, nothing to capture a young boy’s attention other than occasional dead gophers on the roadside or small town pee stops. Now, I look for any opportunity to revisit this vast and open trip to bountiful.

Go ahead and stretch,

let your long arms reach,

your flayed and flowing skin

bulge and billow under concrete veins.

This wide, broad vulnerability,

awake to all, invisible to none,

becomes the soles of our feet.

And so we walk, we walk, and still we walk.

But, alas, you deceive and taunt

with a belly, full and warm

but strong and endless

where here never quite meets there.

In such horizontal places

all tomorrows become today.

Then becomes now.

There becomes here,

where it is we stand.

 

I was born here. It is a simple place on the outside, enigmatic and strange underneath. I’m proud to have grown up in this city. I miss her still.

Bucking horse buckles meet with boots and three-piece suits,

Escalades and pick-up trucks the steed of choice –

these well-oiled good ole boys;

progressive-cosmo melds with oil-baron cowboys.

_____

Living here but not from here,

indigenous works only with Natives, deer, bugs and rivers running

that tuck themselves into rambling folds

of hills, foothills; apprentice mountains.

_____

They call it home but it remains a cash crucible,

laboratory for oil rigs, lusty roughnecks and lonely geologists.

Sucked from deep, sub-soil banks and changed

from raw and black to spent and smoke…smells like money.

Bust to boom and back again,

they put their trust in fuel’s gold fossils.

Then, from up to down they bounce and sway,

this fickle ground beneath their feet.

Build when rich and bitch when poor,

the story stays the same.

_____

Here, newer West trumps older East;

old passive-aggressions grumble on.

Yet, step up closer still and dance to an eclectic tune –

maybe Ukraine,

or Pakistan,

or Thailand.

This global congregation comes in praise of promise and better days.

In the West where whiteness wins and rich is best,

this place can boast all that and still

gloat through gritted teeth over their leader brown,

a Muslim, by God.

_____

Here, for all her thriving hypocrisy,

she still reeks of home.

I know her best and she knows me,

this urban sprawl McMansion sea –

this Calgary.

Golden Spur Ranchetta is the retirement hobby and home of my Mom and her husband Sam Young. It is a place of repose and quiet contemplation. It is also a place of rowdy jam sessions and tall tales told over mosquito infested backyard shenanigans. Perfect. Count me in.

Bare awake but sleeping sound,

outer still and inner, found,

goodness, grace and green abound,

here at Golden Spur.

_____

Horses play where sunrise goes,

swishing tales and snorting nose,

oh, for strength like one of those,

here at Golden Spur.

_____

‘Squitoes reap their dividends,

filling up their sorry ends,

they’ll be sorry in the end,

here at Golden Spur.

_____

Faces known and seeds are sown,

too much beer, the story’s grown,

then it is the truth gets known,

here at Golden Spur.

_____

Sleep like stone when darkness comes,

only light from lightening comes,

I see why they call this home,

here at Golden Spur.

_____

One will hear when one is still,

that holy voice, the soul to fill,

and learn to love God’s loving will,

here at Golden Spur.

_____

Here at Golden Spur.

 

In supine repose she reaches out

with verdant arms of brown and yellow-green,

to clasp her bony fingers in sensuous release

with the vertical horizon.

Skies, gray and whole, play ninety degree tug-o’-war

with grass, prickly hay and knobby-need shrubbery –

rough ‘n tumble farm stubble.

Short shacks and weathered barns

pimple her broad back

alive with promise of more.

Suggesting we but see,

she insists upon her miles-wide self.

Sometimes she sleeps and forfeits life,

longing for heaven’s lusty drool.

This long land has much to speak,

her hard, crusted lips pursed

to kiss only those who see her –

and hold their breath.

 

Buzzing here and floating there,

No conscience, heart, nor tether.

You fill your guts on all my guts

And love this perfect weather.

You bob and weave, you little wretch

To seek your bloody booty.

Your little pin-prick savag’ry,

Your loathsome call of duty.

To squash and maim and flatten you,

‘tis all my heart’s desire.

But conquer one and ten more come

With no plans to retire.

And when I stand at heaven’s gate

My journey to unravel,

Says God, the Lord, the judge of all,

“mosquitoes were my gavel.”

 

My previous poem, Waiting was the first of the series. Here is the second in an oncoming barrage of poetry culled from my recent vacation back to my home stomping grounds in and around Calgary, Alberta.

 

These stands of poplar stand,

alone and stolid and sure;

rejecting all

but light and warm and good.

Their sullen song, languid and low,

lulls my mind from sure to still,

from still to rest,

from rest to rise once more –

to stand.

Their hands upraised, entwining fingers

united in their thoughts;

committed to their cause.

Here, no injustice nor impatience find –

only singing.

 

Shoulders, steeped and round,

massaged by sun of warming, come.

Toward a future point of reference

a heart sits still, its mourning not yet done.

Below deck, crouched in the basement

of this soul, a candle flickers, reluctantly warm,

the only light in this small room.

Crouched, alone in this auditory poise,

tired muscles quiver, weary from waiting,

taut from this long and painful silence,

outrageously shouting their demands –

“be still

and still, be.”