this we do for love


had to roll the window open partway 
clear a narrow porthole
in the frosted windshield 
to follow how the road twisted
fishtailing through snow
monotonous miles of corn stubble
half a night’s drive

in a battered vee-dub bus
cobbled with baling wire
bad shocks and bald tires
slapping myself to keep awake
when the radio stuttered and quit 
crooning my own reckless lonesome ballads
my lovesick obsessions

and she . . . 
ecstatic with crazy worry
pacing her rented rooms
listening to storm broadcasts 
listening to the clock
candles lit and flickering
table set with cheese and soup 
and bread and wine

kept a chair close against the window
waiting breathless
counting headlights passing in the streets below
praying for mine




Saving Jesus


We were shepherds, my little granddaughter Aurora
declared, as she and I and her brother Cody
hiked the hillside trail behind the house
toward our picnic spot on Henry Creek.

She gave us each a stick to walk with,
like shepherds do, she said, and showed us how
to poke our canes into the earth at our feet,
step-by-step, because the canes knew which way

we should go.  It’s God, she explained.  He tells
the canes to guide the shepherds.  And lo,
our canes beckoned us into a patch of bright white
snowberries, in sight of which Cody proclaimed 

God said pick ‘em.  Yeah, Aurora said, God wants us
to carry the berries to the creek and let the currents
wash them away so the soldiers will untie Jesus.
I asked but couldn’t quite puzzle it through

as to why Jesus had been bound in knots of old twine.
It was our charge now to save him.  This was clear.
At Henry Creek we offered our snowberries
in solemn silence, taking turns, beholding each floating berry

as it disappeared toward distant lands downstream.
Lo and double-lo.  God was happy about this.
Jesus slipped out of his bondage and smiled upon us.
And we three shepherds marched righteously home.





Land of the Free


You maybe will ponder this,
in the land of the free
as you roll across the prairie, 
windows wide to the wind.
A Lakota grandmother,
her hair blown wild,
tells you . . .

how she dearly misses her youngest grandson
who lives in the city
where it’s tough for him
but not so tough, she says,

as the rez — drugs and alcohol,
unemployment, soaring dropout rates.

Then she’s quiet.  And tells you . . .

how when she retrieves him,
he’s fidgeting in the back seat.
How exactly here — where the road dips
to cross the river toward Grandma’s --

he beams, stretches his arms wide.
Yells,
Free!  Free!




Chores — Milking

​
Each of the heavy barn doors had to be lifted
on its hinges to drag it closed, for which the boy
bunched his shoulders, huffed, and struggled.
And inside the dim, Dolly waited in her stanchion, 
breathing slow, her puffs of steam rising past the hayloft

through shafts of moonlight, roiling dust-laden air
where winds gathered, moaned in the rafters.
The boy froze — with bucket and stool in hand, listened
to the night’s howl, the creaking beams. Listened
to his heart’s muffled drumbeat, its persistent thrum.

I was that daydreaming boy, split in a flash
from his cocoon, lifted through the barn’s loosened shingles
to a mind’s-eye view of the farm, its little farmhouse
windows lit and flickering; mother, father, brothers, sister,
each of us sailing lonely in the sweeping black emptiness

of the same room.  I was that boy, like a far-off star staring
down, and though I ached for all of us, nothing could be done 
but continue. And suddenly I was glad to have chores.  Awakened
where I’d landed again inside my shoes, inside
the big barn, smells of manure and straw, bucket and stool
still in hand, and Dolly fidgeting with anticipation.