YOKEL ( 18 ) ~

B A S T A R D

Y O K E L

You shall know the truth,

and the truth shall make you odd

FLANNERY O’CONNOR

Men Without Women

What with two large

Barns, new garage and

100 acres of woodland behind

Him, Native’s gutted deer is

Hung from the front yard maple

Farmhand

Native is a farmhand

Always has been.

We don’t live that

Far apart, though

We’ve never met —

Rather seen each

Other’s face in a

Group and nodded

Hello. He lives with

His mother, never

Married and the

Last I knew he was

Working near town

Chopping corn and

Haying for a farmer,

Happy enough to do

That for twenty years.

But today I saw Native

On a back road tugging

A baler with an old

Tractor far from town

And that other farm —

It didn’t seem right

Seeing him way over

There, and even in a

Passing truck we were

Able to catch one another’s

Eye and nod. His face

Unshaved. All the fields

Nearby chopped and raked.

Killing in the Farmyard

It is no more than fifteen feet

But you should be closer —

Especially when using scattershot,

And same time in the morning as yesterday

They hear me coming, because then I shot

Their father or brother or uncle and I like

To avoid a face shot as I watch two bolt from

Compost to go under the chicken hut and one

Ditches into a hole without thinking while the

Other — the bigger one — pauses at the wire

Fencing and waits, curious as I am, actually

Turns around and almost sits up prairie dog style

It will have to be a face shot

If I blink — he’s gone

I’ve gotten this far stalking behind

A tree to a chopping stump and raising

Slowly I aim, he’s a dead-duck, and fire

He’s alive but looking at me his eyes are blood

I clean out a shell to reload and

Quickly finish the job

Each shot burns a whistle in the air

Wakes the dog, shakes the chickens, kills a rat

Old Hand

They wanted $100

For an ash pan

Imagine that —

Native took old scrap

Steel roofing and it

Took three hours

To flatten it out

Bend it around

But he made one

______________

Bob Arnold

Yokel

Longhouse

2011

MOVE FREE ~

 Members of Move in front of their house in Philadelphia in 1977. The Move 9 were arrested following a massive police siege of their home. Photograph: Leif Skoogfors/Corbis via Getty Images

R E A D      M E

ROBERT CHRISTGAU ~

R E A D       M E

Duke University

KEVIN BARRY ~

R E A D      M E

Doubleday 2019

MARGUERITE DURAS ~

R E A D     M E

Dorothyproject.com

2019

VERMONT MAPLE CARTOONS ~

Kitcheneat | Vermont

It's that time of year again ~

sugar on snow!

Robert Schelling has now released

his endearing mutts of the snowy woods

gathering maple sap and making syrup,

zest and a whole town.

I love these cartoons and this book.

The book is kissin' cousin with my own

Sapline from the sugar bush.

JACK BURNS (LONELY ARE THE BRAVE) ~

K I R K      D O U G L A S

I s s u r      D a n i e l o v i t c h

December 9, 1916 ~ 2020

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JANINE ! ~

Happy Birthday, Janine!

5 February 1942

FIRST SIGHT OF HER AND AFTER ~

First Sight of Her and After





A day is drawing to its fall

   I had not dreamed to see;

The first of many to enthrall

   My spirit, will it be?

Or is this eve the end of all

   Such new delight for me?



I journey home: the patterns grow

   Of moonshades on the way:

'Soon the first quarter, I suppose,'

   Sky-glancing travellers say;

I realize that it, for those,

   Has been a common day.




____________________

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

POEMS FROM THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION ~

R E A D    M E

a must!

YOKEL ( 17 ) ~

Woodcutter’s Memo

It will fit into the firebox

If — when she measures it —

Its height doesn’t reach

Above her knee

Lumbermen

My father —

An old lumberman now

Tells me a little yarn about one

Of our descendants who were all

Sawmill owners and loggers and

How Grandfather Henry when he was 

Cutting off Mount Greylock for his mill and

For the state of Massachusetts carving a

Road out to the mountain’s summit also

Worked over one landowner for most of

One night about a particular oak tree he

Wanted and left quite pleased from his

Visit with the man because he was given

Permission to cut the tree he had already

Earlier in the day cut down

Hauling Wood

Winter after winter I used to cut my

Cordwood on the hill and backpacked

Up fuel jugs, water jar, an apple for a 

Snack and chain saw, and when I had my

Wood it was always near Spring. Over the

Spring I usually did something for Native like

Stonework or carpentry and in return he would

Bring his truck over when the woods were

Again dry and begin to haul the cord

Wood out with me and stack it at a

Landing near the house. Without fail

He always began with the woodpile

Furthest back in the woods, until after

Some days we ended the work with

The one closest at hand.

for Alden

Reclaimed

Where loggers

Went through

Now Johnny

Jump ups

______________

Bob Arnold

Yokel

Longhouse

2011

PETER SERKIN ~

P E T E R      S E R K I N

1947 ~ 2020

WES WILSON ~

W E S      W I L S O N

July 15, 1937 ~ January 24, 2020

FORGOTTEN JOURNEY ~

S I L V I N A      O C A M P O

City Lights

2019

February

A chimney, breathing a little smoke.

The sun, I can't see

making a bit of pink

I can't quite see in the blue.

The pink of five tulips

at five p.m. on the day before March first.

The green of the tulip stems and leaves

like something I can't remember,

finding a jack-in-the-pulpit

a long time ago and far away.

Why it was December then

and the sun was on the sea

by the temples we'd gone to see.

One green wave moved in the violet sea

like the UN Building on big evenings,

green and wet

while the sky turns violet.

A few almond trees

had a few flowers, like a few snowflakes

out of the blue looking pink in the light.

A gray hush

in which the boxy trucks roll up Second Avenue

into the sky. They're just

going over the hill.

The green leaves of the tulips on my desk

like grass light on flesh,

and a green-copper steeple

and streaks of cloud beginning to glow.

I can't get over

how it all works in together

like a woman who just came to her window

and stands there filling it

jogging her baby in her arms.

She's so far off. Is it the light

that makes the baby pink?

I can see the little fists

and the rocking-horse motion of her breasts.

It's getting grayer and gold and chilly.

Two dog-size lions face each other

at the corners of a roof.

It's the yellow dust inside the tulips.

It's the shape of a tulip.

It's the water in the drinking glass the tulips are in.

It's a day like any other.

___________________

James Schuyler

Collected Poems

Farrar, Straus and Giroux