DAVID OLNEY ~

1948 ~ 2020

YOKEL ( 15 ) ~

This Is What Native Says At 50 Feet Up

A pine tree, long hanging ropes

Gassy hot day and chain saw with

Native dangling a moment topside

Of the tree like a burst of sunlight as if

He now were the sun, overweight in torn

Tanktop but with biceps the size of my legs

I hear him talk to the sky, the pissy work

And to me that yeah, my son is nineteen years old

And I wish he had never got into tree

Climbing and instead had gone off to

College since at one time he had

All the money in the world —

I asked, How’d that happen?

Waiting for him to lower down his limbing

Saw by rope and I’d refuel

Do you remember Woodstock II ? Native asked

I did —

And did you ever see the poster that went along

With the CD?

I hadn’t —

Well Native’s son went to Woodstock II and came

Back home with 33-thousand dollars —

I whistled at the amount while tying the

Saw off to hoist back up and Native was already

On a roll to get the old story over with:

How his son muddy and cummy over the musical

Weekend was asked to pose with his girlfriend

Nearly naked but she had a bra on was how

Native described it and for that one photograph

They split the money down the middle

I was left to think that over while Native

Spiked in better footing, bitching about

Pine pitch and sweating like a pig,

Sending large saw-chip flurry from

Sharp tooth chain floating down onto

Me and fragrant honeysuckle bushes —

So the kid came home and spent most

Of the money on a new truck that Native

Drives and a bunch of other junk then

With a bottomed out credit card managed

To put himself in debt up to his eyeballs —

So when does he begin work? I joked

When he gets back from Cal-if-ornia ! says a

Snarling chain saw and Native as pine bough

After pine bough come flying down fast 

Native Never Made It

It was Chucky the logger

Who told me later how

Native never made it —

Only a few weeks after

He took down the pine

Trees here and we rolled

Up the ropes together —

Turns out Native got in

With a wrong bunch

Much younger —

Drugs and drinking —

And they thought 

Nothing about tanking

Up an old fart logger

With wicked cocaine

And dumping his

Gasping body off

At the emergency 

Room entrance

From a car that 

Never stopped —

Just like the movies

Without

Without the moon

Without stars

Snowshoes stay hung up

______________

Bob Arnold

Yokel

Longhouse

2011