Earrings
He’d plow snow
All his life and
First with his
Father lights
Whipping the
Woods recall
From a heated
Cab tonight
Coffee thermos
Between the legs
And his own
Two boys riding
Along no matter
How late but damn
Things are getting
Strange how he’d
Never seen a woman
So pretty on this
Back road nor with
Four earrings in
Each ear and her
Friend had one
Stuck through
Poet
Poet came to visit us from Arizona —
Not a country boy but with poet causes.
He stood right up in the Howard
Johnson’s next to our table and
Where his bus had come in and
Did a little routine that still
Makes me laugh.
Back home in our woods
Where he stayed a week
Poet wanted me to show
Him how to split wood,
And then in the evening
Walking the flickering
Darkness of fireflies he
Asked, what were those?
Stars
Bigger as the night got later.
Nearing winter.
I’d walk out last thing of the day.
Bring in two armloads of stovewood.
For the next morning.
That’s when I heard the gunshots.
Unreal. In the middle of nowhere.
Louder than anything I’ve heard for weeks.
Native knew I could hear him jacking deer.
No one else in the world was down here.
One of those things we never talked about.
Occupied
Early morning
Walk into
The woodlot
Where birds sing
Soon enough
Our voices and
Sound of bow saws
Where birds sing
Where birds sing
We stop work and
Listen awhile
Until we sing
_______________
Bob Arnold
Yokel
Longhouse
2011
