Here are a few poems I wrote during my October '08 BWCA trip.....

PT


Pinedale

My friend of twenty years
spills about his family,
the Chicago Bears
and the upcoming cutthroat run.
We exhaust the debate
over what triggers the bite this time of year.
The white pines buck and wave.
He tells me his wife cries
in her sleep?pleads
he has held a damp cloth against her forehead,
laid a bed of goose down across the backseat
of his jeep when they drive
for treatment in Jackson Hole.
I give him more
about the quarterback’s lack of arm strength,
my parent’s trip to Rome,
when to swap salmon spawn in cloud cover.
I want to go back
before we became men,
hold him
upright in the river.


Engaged

The day my father shot the raccoon
in our backyard, was the same day
my sister got engaged.

No one cried.

We found four babies
behind the wood-pile, their eyes still
closed.

I asked my father if I could make a hat
out of its tail. He said no,
threw it in the plastic garbage bag
filled with cake and melted ice-cream.



Psychology 101

I dreamt a man chased his dog
into Old Faithful.

Just laid his body down
before his wife and daughter

could stop and hold him.
They roped the area for a week.

Tourists colored the earth
with bouquets: yellow, pink, and red.

To see it now
will cost you everything.



Sunrise on Lac Lacroix

Years, I have wanted to be kissed
by my father.

To see it clear
as a fawn’s pearl skull

moonlit in the bay
rests alone in my mind.

I steady the canoe against the wind’s wake
and let my father sleep.

Together, we endure what’s missing—
ready our palms.

Sunlight parts
the horizon in two.

very nice....esp that last one.