One man’s horizon is another’s destination.

To see far is not to see clear,

but clarity comes when morning hints

a cold shoulder mystique against the fallen night.

And once more, dawn rises over dusk

one day’s ‘yester’ trades places with another’s ‘to’-

never to return for

all is new once more.

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.