I am thinking about your birthday again.
As I always do, especially at this time.
For, you were the new beginning as a baby.
Even in the womb.
I talked to you all across America.
As we drove to Ohio to your Father's promising job,
A Philodendron was between my ankles and knees.
Everything seemed so uncertain and scary.
Your father had not married me yet.
But I knew that with your new life,
you would bring joy, in the same way
your life inside me brought hope.
I was afraid of the leaky tailpipe
and I watched the flower for wilting
even as I whispered to you
as the night turned to day turned to night
with the window open to give you fresh air,
just in case the fumes would hurt you.
22 hours that way!
Worrying about what it might do to you.
Oh, my wonderful life, my love of new beginnings.
And, you are more wonderful than anything
and anyone in this world could have imagined.
If all of life were a leaky tailpipe,
you would still bring life to it!
And, soon . . . .
standing with little Kevin, the very pregnant me
before the pulpit in distant Gallipolis,
your Father finally said, "I do."
And, my two babies had a sound foundation.
You made me insist upon that choice.
I wanted my new, wonderful daughter to have
a true father. And, so you brought life too
to your brother. My Princess.
How can anyone so small and new and unprotected
in the truest sense . . . cause so much good
to happen in the life of her family!
This is why I named you Pamela after Pamela Cushing
the kindest, gentlest person I knew growing up.
She had a good word for anyone and everyone.
And named you as well after the great grandmother Clausen
for the gift of ancestors carried on in you.
Then, what would you one day do as a youth?
Create a geneology. A miracle again!
Because, this pearl of perfection is YOU,
my Daughter. And, I think about this
especially now . . . and always.
Remember, how you rocked newborn Jessica
her first time home in that pink wooden
rocker we set on the lawn. I have the picture!
That was her first welcome home from the family.
This is your role: to be the one
who generates new life,
in everyone,
as in the birthing phone tape I kept
of the new life of Bess . . . .
crying together, all we three, this makes tears
pop up in happiness, even now . . . .
my gifted baby, . . . you
watering plants and drawing princesses
and stitching an ever-growing quilt
of treasured memories
around her all of her life . . . .
making beautiful hope for everyone
especially, for those she loves!
My flowering daughter!
A helpless baby no more.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Stuff. Fluff. Puff.
It was that moment full of promise.
You know the kind I am talking about.
It was on the boat, the Port Jefferson Ferry over to Bridgeport, Connecticut. Such a new experience. Park the Sentra, or the tin-bucket, as her mother called it years later when she approved putting in a few thousand to exchange it for the used Chrysler Le Baron convertible. Mother wanted a heavier car that could not kill you when a semi-truck hit you. So much heavier, anchored to the road. Nevermind the sun-rotted canvas top
So much power in that motor; the first Le Baron thing encountered, a ticket for running a stop sign because she could not stop it fast enough with all that horsepower behind it.
The Sentra, even new, putting along, had been dependable. It took her to college, a four-hour drive, two hours each way, for three years to get the doctorate. Through rainstorms and deep snows and a near fatal crash on an angled country shortcut through Amish country. She liked the red color. It reminded her of the 1966 Mustang that used to charge up and down the hills of Appalachia. But, now a more practical choice, looking into the future that lay before her. Empty years.
Or more practical years, or safe years, because after a divorce, one is still locked to a dream that has failed: if it were not a dream, what could it have been? The failure of a lifetime of work and of caring and sharing and growing. What to do when someone does not take the final step to age gracefully alongside you, rather looks back to find some imagined dystopia that L. Ron Hubbard offers or Peter Pan seeks with his Tinkerbell -- literally.
The ferry looks so white and sterile this morning, but full of people who have left their cars to sit on the upper decks, to talk and to laugh as the port's landmarks drift by. Actually, lakeside houses with multi-million dollar lives, a hobby boat bobbing in the water at the extension of every sculptured lawn.
It is difficult to travel alone in such a temporal voyage, because it gives one time to think and to wish for an alternative reality. A life of -- if I were him or her or him or her or even him or even her, I would have experienced so much life, rather being plagued with this longing to be up there observing, looking down at the passengers in a ferry making it's way out of the harbor at 8 in the morning.
But the camera is some comfort. One can take the pictures of these villas, and wish happiness for the inhabitants born into the privilege. And, find comfort in that. And, wonder if they appreciate their material possessions. And, wonder if they treasure those around them. And, then conclude that everything is not always what it seems. Perhaps, there has been some life's blood spelt in those lofty sculptured rooms with their chandelier windows.
Too fanciful.
Just sleepless nights to keep a hold of it all, like a flower hanging to a rock on a cliff in the high wind.
Or, filled with happiness. Peace. Contentment. sleeping late. Not one of their pleasure crafts out on the water.
Oh, we always have irony. It helps us to cope. With irony, one manages to fool one's self into believing one has done the right thing. It is a constant human occupation. And, everyone of course, concludes in the end that everything was done right. Aim for practicing all the human virtues that you can. Be dependable. Be a faithful. Respect others. Work hard. Support friends. Be a good wife. Be a good mother. Help others, all others around you, make it through hard times, be thankful for good times.
Her long list.
Who created this role for her?
Sometimes the best pictures are behind you. But, now, those villas seem like one long chain of isolated white flower boxes, hanging precariously on pine-stem cliffs. The bellowing wind brings on the smell of the water, and gulls dive and plunge around the boat, their wings washed cleaned and unfettered, glistening in the sun, trying to natch into a quick meal from the human droppings.
She fancies the gulls almost like herself, a ruminating ferry passenger scooping erratically into imagined lives clinging to alien nests in pine forests on a distant shore.
But soon the boat leaves the harbor, and it is out on the great expanse of water. Nothing to be seen or encounter but one's self. as one gazes into the smell of the lapping waves. Then it is best to leave the wake of passage, and to walk to the front rail, the eye arrested to possibilities, to claim adventuresome thoughts as the ferry plows through the watery expanse.
Just in time: to let go of the bathos -- to pause and reflect and feel good about one's self. To bath one's self in the cool warmth of the morning sun. And, to feel such an invigorating flush from the lovely touch of the morning breeze. Ah! To imagine what is beneath all the human activity. All is good.
The world seems endless when one is out on the water. It is a sabbatical of a sort. The engines purr. All hums around you with surety. A feeling of being thankful for just having survived. The future seems full of endless possibilities.
An excited child's voice rings through the electric air as something is discovered. Only the quietness is disturbed. She is reluctant to pull away her thoughts from the water, and look around to find the source of the amusement.
But only a silent walker now. A man in a summer blues, his silhouette separates itself from the metallic marine white of the boat.
He walks to the rail, about 10 feet over. He looks lonely. He glances over. Once, Twice. Three times. Such a new experience.
He apparently wants to talk.
She cannot. Her hand is locked around the rail. Afraid to let go of memory. She is still grieving over the loss of being sure about having done everything right.
And, years later, she still sees his promising gaze at the rail. And she commands him to "Come now. My wings are glistening wet in the sun. I am ready to wash away this loneliness and to dive into the deep unknown."
Stuff.
Fluff.
Puff.
The seagulls are hungry again this morning.
You know the kind I am talking about.
It was on the boat, the Port Jefferson Ferry over to Bridgeport, Connecticut. Such a new experience. Park the Sentra, or the tin-bucket, as her mother called it years later when she approved putting in a few thousand to exchange it for the used Chrysler Le Baron convertible. Mother wanted a heavier car that could not kill you when a semi-truck hit you. So much heavier, anchored to the road. Nevermind the sun-rotted canvas top
So much power in that motor; the first Le Baron thing encountered, a ticket for running a stop sign because she could not stop it fast enough with all that horsepower behind it.
The Sentra, even new, putting along, had been dependable. It took her to college, a four-hour drive, two hours each way, for three years to get the doctorate. Through rainstorms and deep snows and a near fatal crash on an angled country shortcut through Amish country. She liked the red color. It reminded her of the 1966 Mustang that used to charge up and down the hills of Appalachia. But, now a more practical choice, looking into the future that lay before her. Empty years.
Or more practical years, or safe years, because after a divorce, one is still locked to a dream that has failed: if it were not a dream, what could it have been? The failure of a lifetime of work and of caring and sharing and growing. What to do when someone does not take the final step to age gracefully alongside you, rather looks back to find some imagined dystopia that L. Ron Hubbard offers or Peter Pan seeks with his Tinkerbell -- literally.
The ferry looks so white and sterile this morning, but full of people who have left their cars to sit on the upper decks, to talk and to laugh as the port's landmarks drift by. Actually, lakeside houses with multi-million dollar lives, a hobby boat bobbing in the water at the extension of every sculptured lawn.
It is difficult to travel alone in such a temporal voyage, because it gives one time to think and to wish for an alternative reality. A life of -- if I were him or her or him or her or even him or even her, I would have experienced so much life, rather being plagued with this longing to be up there observing, looking down at the passengers in a ferry making it's way out of the harbor at 8 in the morning.
But the camera is some comfort. One can take the pictures of these villas, and wish happiness for the inhabitants born into the privilege. And, find comfort in that. And, wonder if they appreciate their material possessions. And, wonder if they treasure those around them. And, then conclude that everything is not always what it seems. Perhaps, there has been some life's blood spelt in those lofty sculptured rooms with their chandelier windows.
Too fanciful.
Just sleepless nights to keep a hold of it all, like a flower hanging to a rock on a cliff in the high wind.
Or, filled with happiness. Peace. Contentment. sleeping late. Not one of their pleasure crafts out on the water.
Oh, we always have irony. It helps us to cope. With irony, one manages to fool one's self into believing one has done the right thing. It is a constant human occupation. And, everyone of course, concludes in the end that everything was done right. Aim for practicing all the human virtues that you can. Be dependable. Be a faithful. Respect others. Work hard. Support friends. Be a good wife. Be a good mother. Help others, all others around you, make it through hard times, be thankful for good times.
Her long list.
Who created this role for her?
Sometimes the best pictures are behind you. But, now, those villas seem like one long chain of isolated white flower boxes, hanging precariously on pine-stem cliffs. The bellowing wind brings on the smell of the water, and gulls dive and plunge around the boat, their wings washed cleaned and unfettered, glistening in the sun, trying to natch into a quick meal from the human droppings.
She fancies the gulls almost like herself, a ruminating ferry passenger scooping erratically into imagined lives clinging to alien nests in pine forests on a distant shore.
But soon the boat leaves the harbor, and it is out on the great expanse of water. Nothing to be seen or encounter but one's self. as one gazes into the smell of the lapping waves. Then it is best to leave the wake of passage, and to walk to the front rail, the eye arrested to possibilities, to claim adventuresome thoughts as the ferry plows through the watery expanse.
Just in time: to let go of the bathos -- to pause and reflect and feel good about one's self. To bath one's self in the cool warmth of the morning sun. And, to feel such an invigorating flush from the lovely touch of the morning breeze. Ah! To imagine what is beneath all the human activity. All is good.
The world seems endless when one is out on the water. It is a sabbatical of a sort. The engines purr. All hums around you with surety. A feeling of being thankful for just having survived. The future seems full of endless possibilities.
An excited child's voice rings through the electric air as something is discovered. Only the quietness is disturbed. She is reluctant to pull away her thoughts from the water, and look around to find the source of the amusement.
But only a silent walker now. A man in a summer blues, his silhouette separates itself from the metallic marine white of the boat.
He walks to the rail, about 10 feet over. He looks lonely. He glances over. Once, Twice. Three times. Such a new experience.
He apparently wants to talk.
She cannot. Her hand is locked around the rail. Afraid to let go of memory. She is still grieving over the loss of being sure about having done everything right.
And, years later, she still sees his promising gaze at the rail. And she commands him to "Come now. My wings are glistening wet in the sun. I am ready to wash away this loneliness and to dive into the deep unknown."
Stuff.
Fluff.
Puff.
The seagulls are hungry again this morning.
Monday, April 27, 2009
TENT DREAMS ON THE OMANI PLAIN
I feel like lying back on a high cliff, and howling at the moon for the sheer joy making myself a reverberation in the absolute silence of the night.
Then, crawling into my tent and going into a deep sleep and dreaming.
We know these kind of tent dreams. They reveal only a sliver of moonlight of self. I am guessing this is what the full moon does for some people, call up some primieval longing.
I am remembering that time as a child, when I lay back on the haystack, the fragrant smell of the comforting clover permeating the air as if the wind were driven by the thickness of the air itself, almost like being carried in a current underwater, the water of the air encapsulating me in a profound world of absolute bouyant silence, except for hearing-smelling-feeling of one's own world.
Around me, the blue glow of the moonlight on a nearby, rusting farm husker, and the silvery tin roof of the barn all glowing in that night sky -- so much to smell in that monochromatic silvery, yet amber quiet that you can feel your breath moving in and out, from the inside out.
The distant echoing sound of the cattle lowing. The nearby snort of a horse from the barn. The rustling as a kitten as it runs across the silver layers of the sweet grass. Imagining a cow jumping over the moon. A brother, had said something about a needle in a haystack and a camel that goes through the eye of the needle. The man in the moon. And, an ostrich with its head buried in the ground, with eggs so big that it would take a week to eat through the scrambled yolk within the shell. And, that needle somewhere in the hay, how long it would take to find the adventure of the unknown future.
No one could have imagined all this.
This world of shelled innocence in moonlight reflection.
The sky is glowing again tonight. It is the kind of night, that one just wants to lie back and enjoy the sound of silence, and imagine the connectiveness it all, and of others doing the same in the absolute silence of everything this late-early promising hour of the morning.
Then, crawling into my tent and going into a deep sleep and dreaming.
We know these kind of tent dreams. They reveal only a sliver of moonlight of self. I am guessing this is what the full moon does for some people, call up some primieval longing.
I am remembering that time as a child, when I lay back on the haystack, the fragrant smell of the comforting clover permeating the air as if the wind were driven by the thickness of the air itself, almost like being carried in a current underwater, the water of the air encapsulating me in a profound world of absolute bouyant silence, except for hearing-smelling-feeling of one's own world.
Around me, the blue glow of the moonlight on a nearby, rusting farm husker, and the silvery tin roof of the barn all glowing in that night sky -- so much to smell in that monochromatic silvery, yet amber quiet that you can feel your breath moving in and out, from the inside out.
The distant echoing sound of the cattle lowing. The nearby snort of a horse from the barn. The rustling as a kitten as it runs across the silver layers of the sweet grass. Imagining a cow jumping over the moon. A brother, had said something about a needle in a haystack and a camel that goes through the eye of the needle. The man in the moon. And, an ostrich with its head buried in the ground, with eggs so big that it would take a week to eat through the scrambled yolk within the shell. And, that needle somewhere in the hay, how long it would take to find the adventure of the unknown future.
No one could have imagined all this.
This world of shelled innocence in moonlight reflection.
The sky is glowing again tonight. It is the kind of night, that one just wants to lie back and enjoy the sound of silence, and imagine the connectiveness it all, and of others doing the same in the absolute silence of everything this late-early promising hour of the morning.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
HERE'S A QUESTION FOR YOU . . . .
By Beverly G. Merrick
"What have you learned today?"
That question was addressed to me nearly every time I stepped through the door home from school.
I had better have an answer.
Before me in the battered chair sat my mother, whose swollen feet were propped up on the aging footstool. She had earned long ago that it is exhausting to stand on her feet all day as a cook for less than $1 an hour.
She had wanted to be a teacher, but could not pass her final history exam at St. Paul High School.
"And, so goes life," Mother said. She was determined that my brothers and I should make something of ourselves: that we would never be left short without an answer when it truly counted.
Brother Les and I got so we would have an answer every day; if for nothing else, to allay our guilty feelings that we had only to go to school while she was laboring over a hot stove.
We would go through the encyclopedia, hunting for obscure answers to obscure questions, such as, "How high is high?"
For a while we memorized a word a day out of the dictionary so that we would have a ready answer. The extent of our creative quest for words revealed itself in such phrases as, "Mother, I just met someone who is an addlepated zootsuiter."
As time passed, she suggested to us that all the answers in life could not be found in books. Her question extended itself to, "What have you learned from someone else today?"
Our mother believed, and still does, that you can learn "something" from everybody. With that knowledge, one can make a choice: apply what you have learned from that other person -- amazingly enough, even a parent -- or discard it.
It was a wonderfully "freeing" notion, to be encouraged to think for one's self while learning about the hopes, dreams and lives of others.
It is humbling as well to me to discover that any number of people have come up with better answers to perplexing problems than I could have.
From the interview with 88-year-old Effie McFarland, published when I was the editor of The Custer County Chief, I learned there is always something in life that is "unfinished." She has pursued genealogy research to the extent of having 40 volumes tracing back McFarlands to six generations, a quest started by her mother.
Yet Effie says, when pressed for the interview, "I don't have all the answers yet. I am still working on it. I'll tell you when I get done."
Why is Effie on this lifelong quest? Perhaps the answer can be found in the saying one of her children has framed for her, and placed in the living room. The inscribed picture reads:
"Our family is a circle of strength and of love. With every birth and every union, the circle grows. Every job shared adds more love. Every crisis faced together makes the circle stronger."
Surrounding the plaque are the pictures of 13 grandchildren and many more great grandchildren.
Her familial display reminded me that we all belong to circles of knowing. We continue to learn from others all of our lives concerning questions both great and small.
Some questions go unanswered for the longest time because we cannot figure out the answer.
I want to share with you several painful questions that are puzzling me.
In the case of Iraq, for instance, I wonder why we have to burn down the barn and everything in it because someone is a mad bull.
I see circles of grandchildren and many more great grandchildren in Iraq who have done nothing to help them face such a fire.
I wonder if anyone is going to start wanting to check out our American barn for weapons of mass destruction.
I am hoping they will not remind us that we have destroyed at least two other barns already with weapons of mass destruction.
Surely, we are not saying, "Do as I say, not as I do."
In any case, how does one deal with a post 9-11 world in view of all this?
I would rather go to a barn-raising, where everyone is talking about solving the problems of building a sound post 9-11 structure to serve the global community; it seems like more is accomplished with goodwill construction built into the mortar joints.
Don't press me for any final answers yet. Like Effie, I am still working on it.
"What have you learned today?"
That question was addressed to me nearly every time I stepped through the door home from school.
I had better have an answer.
Before me in the battered chair sat my mother, whose swollen feet were propped up on the aging footstool. She had earned long ago that it is exhausting to stand on her feet all day as a cook for less than $1 an hour.
She had wanted to be a teacher, but could not pass her final history exam at St. Paul High School.
"And, so goes life," Mother said. She was determined that my brothers and I should make something of ourselves: that we would never be left short without an answer when it truly counted.
Brother Les and I got so we would have an answer every day; if for nothing else, to allay our guilty feelings that we had only to go to school while she was laboring over a hot stove.
We would go through the encyclopedia, hunting for obscure answers to obscure questions, such as, "How high is high?"
For a while we memorized a word a day out of the dictionary so that we would have a ready answer. The extent of our creative quest for words revealed itself in such phrases as, "Mother, I just met someone who is an addlepated zootsuiter."
As time passed, she suggested to us that all the answers in life could not be found in books. Her question extended itself to, "What have you learned from someone else today?"
Our mother believed, and still does, that you can learn "something" from everybody. With that knowledge, one can make a choice: apply what you have learned from that other person -- amazingly enough, even a parent -- or discard it.
It was a wonderfully "freeing" notion, to be encouraged to think for one's self while learning about the hopes, dreams and lives of others.
It is humbling as well to me to discover that any number of people have come up with better answers to perplexing problems than I could have.
From the interview with 88-year-old Effie McFarland, published when I was the editor of The Custer County Chief, I learned there is always something in life that is "unfinished." She has pursued genealogy research to the extent of having 40 volumes tracing back McFarlands to six generations, a quest started by her mother.
Yet Effie says, when pressed for the interview, "I don't have all the answers yet. I am still working on it. I'll tell you when I get done."
Why is Effie on this lifelong quest? Perhaps the answer can be found in the saying one of her children has framed for her, and placed in the living room. The inscribed picture reads:
"Our family is a circle of strength and of love. With every birth and every union, the circle grows. Every job shared adds more love. Every crisis faced together makes the circle stronger."
Surrounding the plaque are the pictures of 13 grandchildren and many more great grandchildren.
Her familial display reminded me that we all belong to circles of knowing. We continue to learn from others all of our lives concerning questions both great and small.
Some questions go unanswered for the longest time because we cannot figure out the answer.
I want to share with you several painful questions that are puzzling me.
In the case of Iraq, for instance, I wonder why we have to burn down the barn and everything in it because someone is a mad bull.
I see circles of grandchildren and many more great grandchildren in Iraq who have done nothing to help them face such a fire.
I wonder if anyone is going to start wanting to check out our American barn for weapons of mass destruction.
I am hoping they will not remind us that we have destroyed at least two other barns already with weapons of mass destruction.
Surely, we are not saying, "Do as I say, not as I do."
In any case, how does one deal with a post 9-11 world in view of all this?
I would rather go to a barn-raising, where everyone is talking about solving the problems of building a sound post 9-11 structure to serve the global community; it seems like more is accomplished with goodwill construction built into the mortar joints.
Don't press me for any final answers yet. Like Effie, I am still working on it.
Monday, August 18, 2008
CALVING: LIFE BEGINS AGAIN ON A BITTERLY COLD MARCH DAY
Eric Schipporeit measures his words with care. He is a reflective herdsman, who walks the pasture, watching and waiting -- sometimes intervening.
Calving season is in, and he checks the heavy-laden cows, especially when it is cold. The weather dictates how often he has to be out there in the field. The wind is keen and biting today. He checks the cows around the clock at two-hour intervals and less.
He speaks of the calves as if they were his babies. He talks of them getting stressed out in the cold. Freezing rain is the worst. Snow can be shaken off. But the windchill factor might cause several newborn calves to die of exposure.
The stockman looks for lethargy. That is a sure sign a calf is in trouble.
"I have taken them in the pickup with me," he said. "It is important for them to get up right away and eat. Sometimes I warm them up by sticking them in the bathtub."
Sometimes three to four calves are put into a hotbox, which is much like a large, heated doghouse, to keep warm.
Eric keeps an eye on cows that go off by themselves, walking the fence. And he has had some fence crawlers lately.
He watches for the nervous twitch of the tail. The udder that starts filling up.
Eric's father, Alfred, said, "The cow ready to calve gets a long-distance look in her eye."
His son adds, "It takes patience. You wait, and you let the cow do her thing. And if you have to intervene, you do. Patience and progress go hand-in-hand -- the progress the cow is making with the calving. You can't be in a hurry to assist."
Normal calving can be divided into three general stages -- preparatory, fetal expulsion and expulsion of the placenta or afterbirth. The time interval varies with each breed, according to extension specialists Gene H. Deutscher and Donald B. Hudson.
The preparatory stage runs two to six hours, depending on breed. During pregnancy, the fetal calf is normally on its back. Just prior to labor, it rotates to an upright position with its forelegs and head pointed toward the birth canal, in a position providing the least resistance during birth.
Delivery runs one hour or less, depending on breed. Eric said it takes longer for a cow to have a calf in the barn because a cow does not want to be confined during delivery.
The stage begins when the fetus enters the birth canal, and this usually occurs when the cow is lying down. Uterine contractions are now about every two minutes and are accompanied by voluntary contractions of the diaphragm and abdominal muscles.
If the herdsman sees a presentation of hoofs right side up first, then this is normal. The front hoofs, then head come out, followed by the shoulders, the chest and the back legs. Surrounded by membranes, the calf's forelegs and nose first protrude from the vulva. After the nose is exposed, maximum straining pushes the chest and shoulders through the pelvic girdle.
Alfred said the normal calving progress, once the water has broken, is three to four hours to delivery.
"Usually, as long as there is some movement," he said, "everything is going well."
Eric said, "Lots of times, the calf lands on its head."
Normally, it takes only 15 to 20 minutes to clean off the calf.
In stage three, cows normally expel the placenta within two to eight hours. Abnormal positions make it necessary for the herdsman to intervene: that would be a foot, a head and one foot, no head or a tail -- the worst circumstance, because it means a breech birth.
Eric said, "From the time you make the decision you have to do caesarean, it is one and a half hours to the vet. I keep all the tools for a caesarean right here at the ranch: the scalpels, the needles and sutures."
He has done 30 to 40 caesareans in the last 20 years. During the emergency operation, the calf is taken out of the flank of the cow while she is standing up, locked stationery for safety in his calving shed.
The next critical factor is to get the mother to feed the calf when it is born. If that is not possible, to get another cow to take the orphan. The herdsman does this by fooling the cow with black colostrum powder and feeding the calf on a nippled bottle.
Eric said "Calf Claimer" is a by-product with an odor and a distinct taste. He sprinkles some on the hair of the calf and puts some in the cow's mouth. If she starts licking the calf, he has started the process.
Eric can tell by "the body language" of the cow when and if it is going to accept the calf. "The calf has to keep up with the mama before I leave it to the natural process," he said. "If this goes on for four of five days, and the cow is still having trouble with the calf, then it is not going good."
Once the birth cycle has run on the ranch, it is time for May branding. The calves are inoculated, mostly for blackleg and possible respiratory disorders. The young bulls are castrated at that time.
Some ranchers choose to calve in February so that the calves are dropped when the ground is hard. Others believe April is the ideal calving season because the cold has passed.
Eric said, "When cold weather is done, there is a lot less work involved in calving. It is also a lot less labor to calve in the fall, but the mother raises the calf in the winter when it is most stressful for her."
He said some are choosing the fall calving cycle to be able to get better prices at the livestock market.
Cow work slacks off in late summer, but there is always the job of keeping records. Eric keeps intensive records on each and every cow.
The average Angus cow calves for 11 or 12 years, until her teeth are worn.
Weaning comes late in October, usually after a good frost.
Eric places the cows and calves in a small meadow. On the day of weaning, the cows are placed in a corral, while calves remain in the meadow where they last saw their mamas. Apparently, the bawling goes on for days.
By weaning, the 70-to 90-pound calf has grown to 400- to 500-pounds.
Alfred said, "Another reason to wean at that time is to give the cow all her strength for the baby inside. That calf is going to nurse as long as it can, even to the point of running its mother down."
Steers are sold, as well as some heifers. After being fattened three to five months (120 days) in a feedlot, they are ready to go to slaughter.
Alfred said added, "You come to recognize the cows as individuals. Like mother, like daughter. You can hang your hat on that.
During breeding season, cows are segregated from bulls.
Eric genetically engineers his pasture, trying out a variety of bulls and using artificial insemination, weeding out those in the herd with less desirable traits. For cows, he is seeking traits too. He wants them to be docile, maternal and of good disposition, as well as to inherit good carcasses. In 1980, he started creating the lines to get the best traits in his stock into the 20th generation.
He says that birth weight is one trait that cannot be elected. Some calves weigh over 100 pounds at birth, which makes it hard on the cow during delivery.
There are 283 days altogether in a gestation period.
Of course, the work in the pasture never stops.
On a February drive through the pasture, while a heifer is calving, Eric feeds cattle protein pellets along with their corn.
The corn is for energy. The protein pellets take the place of alfalfa. He starts adding them the first of December. He will be mixing them in with the corn until the 10th of May.
Alfred said, "If it takes two cows to make a shadow, you'd better give them more feed."
The whole cycle runs 18 months, from calving to grocery shelf.
Eric said, "The mistakes one makes now are not realized until a year and a half from now."
That is why he is such a careful herdsman. Much of his business is watching the livestock market to see how it fluctuates, depending on weather and futures.
He does find time after calving for hunting upland birds, waterfowl, elk, deer and buffalo, being a member of a hunting club. His two English pointers are Spec and Wendy. He also has a black lab named Jyp.
The Schipporeit Ranch celebrated its centennial year in 1983. The original ranch was 160 homestead acres. The family now ranches about 2,000 acres, as well as leasing other acreage.
Eric's son, Thomas, is 8. That makes the Schipporeit family a fifth generation ranch family.
Eric's first 4-H project was a stocker/feeder calf, a Hereford steer called Roving Rambling. He showed it as a finished market animal. He has an associate degree in agriculture from the Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture at Curtis.
By Beverly Merric, Custer County Chief, Spring 2003, Some Stories Change Your Life
Calving season is in, and he checks the heavy-laden cows, especially when it is cold. The weather dictates how often he has to be out there in the field. The wind is keen and biting today. He checks the cows around the clock at two-hour intervals and less.
He speaks of the calves as if they were his babies. He talks of them getting stressed out in the cold. Freezing rain is the worst. Snow can be shaken off. But the windchill factor might cause several newborn calves to die of exposure.
The stockman looks for lethargy. That is a sure sign a calf is in trouble.
"I have taken them in the pickup with me," he said. "It is important for them to get up right away and eat. Sometimes I warm them up by sticking them in the bathtub."
Sometimes three to four calves are put into a hotbox, which is much like a large, heated doghouse, to keep warm.
Eric keeps an eye on cows that go off by themselves, walking the fence. And he has had some fence crawlers lately.
He watches for the nervous twitch of the tail. The udder that starts filling up.
Eric's father, Alfred, said, "The cow ready to calve gets a long-distance look in her eye."
His son adds, "It takes patience. You wait, and you let the cow do her thing. And if you have to intervene, you do. Patience and progress go hand-in-hand -- the progress the cow is making with the calving. You can't be in a hurry to assist."
Normal calving can be divided into three general stages -- preparatory, fetal expulsion and expulsion of the placenta or afterbirth. The time interval varies with each breed, according to extension specialists Gene H. Deutscher and Donald B. Hudson.
The preparatory stage runs two to six hours, depending on breed. During pregnancy, the fetal calf is normally on its back. Just prior to labor, it rotates to an upright position with its forelegs and head pointed toward the birth canal, in a position providing the least resistance during birth.
Delivery runs one hour or less, depending on breed. Eric said it takes longer for a cow to have a calf in the barn because a cow does not want to be confined during delivery.
The stage begins when the fetus enters the birth canal, and this usually occurs when the cow is lying down. Uterine contractions are now about every two minutes and are accompanied by voluntary contractions of the diaphragm and abdominal muscles.
If the herdsman sees a presentation of hoofs right side up first, then this is normal. The front hoofs, then head come out, followed by the shoulders, the chest and the back legs. Surrounded by membranes, the calf's forelegs and nose first protrude from the vulva. After the nose is exposed, maximum straining pushes the chest and shoulders through the pelvic girdle.
Alfred said the normal calving progress, once the water has broken, is three to four hours to delivery.
"Usually, as long as there is some movement," he said, "everything is going well."
Eric said, "Lots of times, the calf lands on its head."
Normally, it takes only 15 to 20 minutes to clean off the calf.
In stage three, cows normally expel the placenta within two to eight hours. Abnormal positions make it necessary for the herdsman to intervene: that would be a foot, a head and one foot, no head or a tail -- the worst circumstance, because it means a breech birth.
Eric said, "From the time you make the decision you have to do caesarean, it is one and a half hours to the vet. I keep all the tools for a caesarean right here at the ranch: the scalpels, the needles and sutures."
He has done 30 to 40 caesareans in the last 20 years. During the emergency operation, the calf is taken out of the flank of the cow while she is standing up, locked stationery for safety in his calving shed.
The next critical factor is to get the mother to feed the calf when it is born. If that is not possible, to get another cow to take the orphan. The herdsman does this by fooling the cow with black colostrum powder and feeding the calf on a nippled bottle.
Eric said "Calf Claimer" is a by-product with an odor and a distinct taste. He sprinkles some on the hair of the calf and puts some in the cow's mouth. If she starts licking the calf, he has started the process.
Eric can tell by "the body language" of the cow when and if it is going to accept the calf. "The calf has to keep up with the mama before I leave it to the natural process," he said. "If this goes on for four of five days, and the cow is still having trouble with the calf, then it is not going good."
Once the birth cycle has run on the ranch, it is time for May branding. The calves are inoculated, mostly for blackleg and possible respiratory disorders. The young bulls are castrated at that time.
Some ranchers choose to calve in February so that the calves are dropped when the ground is hard. Others believe April is the ideal calving season because the cold has passed.
Eric said, "When cold weather is done, there is a lot less work involved in calving. It is also a lot less labor to calve in the fall, but the mother raises the calf in the winter when it is most stressful for her."
He said some are choosing the fall calving cycle to be able to get better prices at the livestock market.
Cow work slacks off in late summer, but there is always the job of keeping records. Eric keeps intensive records on each and every cow.
The average Angus cow calves for 11 or 12 years, until her teeth are worn.
Weaning comes late in October, usually after a good frost.
Eric places the cows and calves in a small meadow. On the day of weaning, the cows are placed in a corral, while calves remain in the meadow where they last saw their mamas. Apparently, the bawling goes on for days.
By weaning, the 70-to 90-pound calf has grown to 400- to 500-pounds.
Alfred said, "Another reason to wean at that time is to give the cow all her strength for the baby inside. That calf is going to nurse as long as it can, even to the point of running its mother down."
Steers are sold, as well as some heifers. After being fattened three to five months (120 days) in a feedlot, they are ready to go to slaughter.
Alfred said added, "You come to recognize the cows as individuals. Like mother, like daughter. You can hang your hat on that.
During breeding season, cows are segregated from bulls.
Eric genetically engineers his pasture, trying out a variety of bulls and using artificial insemination, weeding out those in the herd with less desirable traits. For cows, he is seeking traits too. He wants them to be docile, maternal and of good disposition, as well as to inherit good carcasses. In 1980, he started creating the lines to get the best traits in his stock into the 20th generation.
He says that birth weight is one trait that cannot be elected. Some calves weigh over 100 pounds at birth, which makes it hard on the cow during delivery.
There are 283 days altogether in a gestation period.
Of course, the work in the pasture never stops.
On a February drive through the pasture, while a heifer is calving, Eric feeds cattle protein pellets along with their corn.
The corn is for energy. The protein pellets take the place of alfalfa. He starts adding them the first of December. He will be mixing them in with the corn until the 10th of May.
Alfred said, "If it takes two cows to make a shadow, you'd better give them more feed."
The whole cycle runs 18 months, from calving to grocery shelf.
Eric said, "The mistakes one makes now are not realized until a year and a half from now."
That is why he is such a careful herdsman. Much of his business is watching the livestock market to see how it fluctuates, depending on weather and futures.
He does find time after calving for hunting upland birds, waterfowl, elk, deer and buffalo, being a member of a hunting club. His two English pointers are Spec and Wendy. He also has a black lab named Jyp.
The Schipporeit Ranch celebrated its centennial year in 1983. The original ranch was 160 homestead acres. The family now ranches about 2,000 acres, as well as leasing other acreage.
Eric's son, Thomas, is 8. That makes the Schipporeit family a fifth generation ranch family.
Eric's first 4-H project was a stocker/feeder calf, a Hereford steer called Roving Rambling. He showed it as a finished market animal. He has an associate degree in agriculture from the Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture at Curtis.
By Beverly Merric, Custer County Chief, Spring 2003, Some Stories Change Your Life
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC
You might enjoy this brief family story about the love of music . . . . I wrote it after seeing one of my Nebraska students perform in a university musical. . . . He has just contacted me again, and I rediscovered this bit of writing about his performance. I thought of our Broadway musical in the Emirates . . . . This story below is a gift to Kate, our enthusiastic conductor.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
A Little Night Music: "Where Are The Clowns?"
By Beverly Merrick
Somewhere on the edge of memory, one hears a song and wonders from where it comes. So it has been with A Litle Night Music for someone whose life is governed by the sound of music. I speak more specifically of the song "Where Are the Clowns?".
Our family was raised on music. Every single day, whether it be in the pre-television world or post-world, the night's music would be a songfest, whether one were alone of with one or two of family or with the whole group singing on more festive occasions. In fact, our talents ranged from that of an aged accordion player to someone who has mastered nine instruments and is still counting. Their talents were separated by time, and they had never met, their common connection being my generation.
Uncle Vernon would pull his wooden-boxed accordion that had come over on the boat from Germany back and forth in a jagged rhythm with his broad calloused hands while he tried to manage blowing through the mouth harp. That is, it was a study in itself to see him to try to coordinate it all, from the brace of the harp around his neck to the straps wrapped around his shoulders. All this occurred while he was grinning and singing slightly off-key. Of course, all this was accompanied by a great satisfaction. Who would stop and question the pure joy he had in the process of making it all come together?
From him, I learned the satisfaction of the creation of music, rather than the mastery of music in the traditional sense. From him, I have found a melody running through my frame on the road, in the shower, walking down the hall to my office. It could be a song like "Ringo,Rango" from a kindergarten class or a song like "Paper Roses" from at eenage dance 45 years ago or a song from yesterday like "Rocky Top"at a bluegrass fest.
The other end of the range of family players is nephew Stephen, who plays nine instruments. He went to the New England Conservatory of Music after gaining a lifetime on the road with my brother Les and his wife Sandy, traveling evangelists. His premier professional performance was playing in Japan. He had met his wife who wanted to be a physician in a church choir, and when they married, they placed nine decorative cardboard instruments across the steps of the risers to the pulpit while they said their nuptials. Truly home taught, for Stephen, everyday was mastering some other extra melody of the world of song, building a note and nuance a cognitive thought at a time. I trust his wife will eventually get to fulfill the music of her dreams as well -- as a physician.
From my family inheritance, I have found a melody running through my frame in the most emotive of times. It could be in the labor room bearing a child singing inside the words of "You Light Up My Life" to standing at the outer edge of a graveyard service singing inside the words of "Amazing Grace" to driving through an ice storm at 4 in the morning singing inside the words of "When You Walk Through the Storm Keep Your Head Up High."
Children of the 1940s were raised on musicals featuring Ginny andFred, and seeing a staircase of Ziegfield ladies, their heads decked in plumage descending a long, winding stair onto a dance floor, where their skirts whirled around in colorful swirls. Their finishing school of the 1950s was the jukebox, with Elvis and Chubby Checkers and the Everly Brothers leading a whole cast of musical players.
Therefore, I approached A Little Night Music differently from that of the typical student of the theater – if such a thespian is named. I could contemplate on stage any number of characters who twirled in orbs of lyrical sounds. And, in the back of my mind, I hoped, American music had turned on a new cycle of the musical extravaganza. Add to this, that one of the main players was one of my students in the photojournalism class who had disappeared from sessions a few weeks earlier.
To find Steve Ingemansen on the program of A Little Night Music was indeed a pleasurable surprise. Also, click, click, click, the Rubic's puzzle was nearly solved. The last turn fell into place when he came to my office with tears in his eyes, apparently holding back emotion. In my office, he sat, his arms pinioned to his knees. He had not turned in photo assignments for three weeks, and his red-rimmed eyes spoke more clearly than his halting words that he was not going to make it. I thought to myself: "What good acting!"
I let him run on for awhile. Then I let him know all this was not necessary. It is a case of actor recognizing the life of another actor. I told him he did not have to worry about me because I was an actor too. It took a while to convince him. I believe it was after I shared the experience I had of getting through tenure and promotion last time, at New Mexico State, by taking on the role and the 292 lines of Abby in Arsenic and Old Lace, which included the first lines and the last lines of the play at the Las Cruces Community Playhouse.
And, in the end, there was a nice hug and good wishes for Steve. Heartfelt.
Ironically, I never connected the song "Where Are the Clowns?" with the play. It was one of those melodies our family tends to pick up as a course of our odd fascination with music. So, it was one of those melodies that runs through the head without knowing the source.Therefore, it was quite remarkable that continues to make music magic to hear one of my students sing this as a closing in a college play called A Little NightMusic – for it is all a little tradition that has persisted a long time in our family.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
A Little Night Music: "Where Are The Clowns?"
By Beverly Merrick
Somewhere on the edge of memory, one hears a song and wonders from where it comes. So it has been with A Litle Night Music for someone whose life is governed by the sound of music. I speak more specifically of the song "Where Are the Clowns?".
Our family was raised on music. Every single day, whether it be in the pre-television world or post-world, the night's music would be a songfest, whether one were alone of with one or two of family or with the whole group singing on more festive occasions. In fact, our talents ranged from that of an aged accordion player to someone who has mastered nine instruments and is still counting. Their talents were separated by time, and they had never met, their common connection being my generation.
Uncle Vernon would pull his wooden-boxed accordion that had come over on the boat from Germany back and forth in a jagged rhythm with his broad calloused hands while he tried to manage blowing through the mouth harp. That is, it was a study in itself to see him to try to coordinate it all, from the brace of the harp around his neck to the straps wrapped around his shoulders. All this occurred while he was grinning and singing slightly off-key. Of course, all this was accompanied by a great satisfaction. Who would stop and question the pure joy he had in the process of making it all come together?
From him, I learned the satisfaction of the creation of music, rather than the mastery of music in the traditional sense. From him, I have found a melody running through my frame on the road, in the shower, walking down the hall to my office. It could be a song like "Ringo,Rango" from a kindergarten class or a song like "Paper Roses" from at eenage dance 45 years ago or a song from yesterday like "Rocky Top"at a bluegrass fest.
The other end of the range of family players is nephew Stephen, who plays nine instruments. He went to the New England Conservatory of Music after gaining a lifetime on the road with my brother Les and his wife Sandy, traveling evangelists. His premier professional performance was playing in Japan. He had met his wife who wanted to be a physician in a church choir, and when they married, they placed nine decorative cardboard instruments across the steps of the risers to the pulpit while they said their nuptials. Truly home taught, for Stephen, everyday was mastering some other extra melody of the world of song, building a note and nuance a cognitive thought at a time. I trust his wife will eventually get to fulfill the music of her dreams as well -- as a physician.
From my family inheritance, I have found a melody running through my frame in the most emotive of times. It could be in the labor room bearing a child singing inside the words of "You Light Up My Life" to standing at the outer edge of a graveyard service singing inside the words of "Amazing Grace" to driving through an ice storm at 4 in the morning singing inside the words of "When You Walk Through the Storm Keep Your Head Up High."
Children of the 1940s were raised on musicals featuring Ginny andFred, and seeing a staircase of Ziegfield ladies, their heads decked in plumage descending a long, winding stair onto a dance floor, where their skirts whirled around in colorful swirls. Their finishing school of the 1950s was the jukebox, with Elvis and Chubby Checkers and the Everly Brothers leading a whole cast of musical players.
Therefore, I approached A Little Night Music differently from that of the typical student of the theater – if such a thespian is named. I could contemplate on stage any number of characters who twirled in orbs of lyrical sounds. And, in the back of my mind, I hoped, American music had turned on a new cycle of the musical extravaganza. Add to this, that one of the main players was one of my students in the photojournalism class who had disappeared from sessions a few weeks earlier.
To find Steve Ingemansen on the program of A Little Night Music was indeed a pleasurable surprise. Also, click, click, click, the Rubic's puzzle was nearly solved. The last turn fell into place when he came to my office with tears in his eyes, apparently holding back emotion. In my office, he sat, his arms pinioned to his knees. He had not turned in photo assignments for three weeks, and his red-rimmed eyes spoke more clearly than his halting words that he was not going to make it. I thought to myself: "What good acting!"
I let him run on for awhile. Then I let him know all this was not necessary. It is a case of actor recognizing the life of another actor. I told him he did not have to worry about me because I was an actor too. It took a while to convince him. I believe it was after I shared the experience I had of getting through tenure and promotion last time, at New Mexico State, by taking on the role and the 292 lines of Abby in Arsenic and Old Lace, which included the first lines and the last lines of the play at the Las Cruces Community Playhouse.
And, in the end, there was a nice hug and good wishes for Steve. Heartfelt.
Ironically, I never connected the song "Where Are the Clowns?" with the play. It was one of those melodies our family tends to pick up as a course of our odd fascination with music. So, it was one of those melodies that runs through the head without knowing the source.Therefore, it was quite remarkable that continues to make music magic to hear one of my students sing this as a closing in a college play called A Little NightMusic – for it is all a little tradition that has persisted a long time in our family.
Monday, January 28, 2008
COCK-A-DOODLE-DO ©
The neighbor's rooster lives one day at a time
and each day he rises an hour too early.
All the neighboring cocks have to have the last crow
until Grandma is called up from the creaking springs.
She steps cold‑tempered across the wooden floor
with the ache of blue‑veined, spatulate feet.
There is no room to watch her.
Grandma uses up the kitchen
as she swings around to build the fire.
Soon corncobs crackle loudly in the cast‑iron stove
with flashes of quick, white pops
reheating the water to lukewarm in the closet.
They say Grandfather was a tall man.
But now he stoops to the water in the basin.
He is as gnarled as his fingers.
His hands, purple‑veined from the cold
lather up with the Lava.
He throws the water up around his rooster neck.
It's a splash colder than death to his stubble
and a painstakingly, tremulous shave.
His old age is now a film of gray
dirty bubbles in the basin.
He sits liked a stone, waiting for breakfast.
He cocks his neck to break away his eyes
from the crack running the course of the pane.
He admires the grape vines tied to the fence.
Grandma leans over his shoulder
nustles his pink cheek, judges the clouds.
She sees a full day ahead in the clothespins
clipped to the empty wire. As he lifts his fork
Grandma tips the wash water into the pail.
I WALK IN CORNROW RHYTHM ©
I walk in cornrow rhythm. I set the measured step
for my own one pass through the field.
My limbs have become syncopated
to the reach‑step‑bend‑snap‑pull‑drop
music of the clean pick.
I am the god machine. I harvest the sound
of the cornfield with my own full ear.
My hands dehead the dew‑beaded
hollow stock in one clean snap.
Released, the pithy stalk pops up straight.
I move the field one plant at a time. I work below
the cacophony of blades with my own fast grasp.
I drop the sleeveless tassel
in the suck of the mud; its golden ropes
splay roughly under my bemired feet.
I recreate the funnel of the row with my own
ripe eye. The cornshoots sprout up before my step.
I see the fallow soil reform
into furrows under a cornblade canopy.
The moist wind soughs through a caliope of blades.
I am the transplant in bloom.
My scalp prickles warm with my own hot god.
My feet waddle duck‑mud cold
under the cut of the fistulous rustling.
The pollen traces mark my passage beneath.
I am the scarecrow. I put to flight
the lacuna of the sun with my own full dreams.
My labor has burned an end
to the furrow; I must forsake
the silkiness of a soliloquent morning.
I am first out of the field; I shift my soul
to call back my own sweet smell of the corn.
I am a cornrow pariah. As I splay my spirit
on the berm of the ditch, the wind wifts in
with the crowing of the many of the crew.
Poetry Reading, University of New Mexico
Conference, Winter 1985
Navigating the Platte, Ohio University, Creative Thesis, 1993
The Small Pond Magazine of Literature
VXXVIII, No. 2 (Spring 1991): p. 37.
KAYN AYNKOREH* ©
Yes, there are thirteen ways, and more,
to look at the blackbird
but it is the corn that makes the hollow
sound of the shock of the season
and the black bird
is only the dovecote
that devours the green.
The covenant cold will come:
rustle to shake all reason.
We can choose to rage
at the sight of the last shuck in the field
to shriek when we find the worm in the ear
to bargain for another hull to fill the husk
to surrender to the promise of a later yield
even to welcome
the coming of the black bird
but first we all must listen
to the rattle
of the wind in the cornstalks.
*HEBREW: Do not fear to call up the monster.
BREATHEING ©
The flood is falling
from furrows between cornstalks.
A heavy carp flops.
The Worm in the Eye, dedicated to Pamela Christine Childers, 2002
WITH THE TURN OF THE SPADE ©
We thought we could do anything
after turning that acre of ground
spading row after row after row.
The spade cut so cleanly into the crust
as we locked our bare toes over the steel lip
rocking back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
The wonderful, painful ache of the shoulders
with 100 turns of the shovel.
We swore each turn of earth was 12 inches deep.
We were hunched with resolve to turn under
the whole of the field
to prove ourselves warriors under the sun.
It was the rocking of the weight on the spade
a cadence of caring I cannot forget.
It was thinking I could turn the acre of the world
with you grabbing the shovel to spell me
like we had enough time between dawn and dusk
to dig forever parallel in breaths.
AROUGHCAN* ©
The raccoon is always with me.
I took the orphaned cub young
from where she chittered wildly
her back arched on the swaying limb.
She who scratches with her hands was easily made tame.
Her pixilated spirit undisguised behind a foxlike face
she would nuzzle at the rubber nipple
then finding it, nurse fiercely – clutching the bottle
with long claws on curiously delicate human paws.
When rocked, she would curl a quiet conundrum
ball‑like in the curve of my arm
hiding her face in the crease of a sleeve;
then suddenly awake, her whiskers bristling
she would scale a shoulder, plucking at the flannel collar
hanging downwards to explore a pocket
twirling the shirt's bottoms
with a contented purr. I would tickle her fine‑furred
underside, and she would wrestle bearclawed:
snarling, sidling sideways in mock battle
curled lips over bared teeth.
Loyal only to me – until a friendly bite drew blood.
I carried her wildness, caged, down to the wooded riverbank,
the sound of her half‑grown churls cutting
like sharp sighs through the rough prairie grass.
Opening the wired door, with cooled anger
I coaxed her out on the damp sand.
She lay sprawling on the water's edge:
black eyes bulging, feigning death.
I stroked her coarse back, trailing a hand cross‑purpose
to the straight‑ringed tail. She stiffened, suddenly alert
an ancient anima raising up on her haunches.
I backstepped through the fields
retreating to the darkened house. I return again –
and again – to the river's living bank
but only see tiny footprints
cutting crosspaths in the sand.
Once I followed the tracks where the narrowed loess trail
made close passage through rocks, trees and stumps.
The mischievous bearer of the hot nocturnal soul
had long since retreated, waiting out of sight.
Tonight I go again to take the raccoon back to the wilderness.
*AROUGHCAN: [pronounced ah‑rew‑cahn] Indian dialect, for raccoon.
Navigating the Platte, Ohio University, Creative Thesis, 1986
The Pearl, The University of New Mexico
Alliance for Academic Excellence, 1987
POLITE DIAGNOSIS ©
When I think of Elizabeth Blackwell
the first woman doctor
I think of her sensitive hands.
She treated deeply injured people
with the firmest touch
like the time
as a child
when she gravely shook hands
with all twenty-seven Utes
who travel-weary
and standing
on a dock in New York
were silent untouchables.
She bowed,
locked hand grasps firmly
and asked each politely,
“How do you do?”
She did fine with those hands.
CLOSING THE GATE ©
Last night I heard the angel sing.
His velcrose whisper softly stung
like a spider crawling in the hair
as I kneaded a widening tunnel
through wallpapered rooms, my heartbeats
pounding away thirty weed‑grown years.
Her eyes do twinkle, you know.
She is every inch the Swedish grandmother.
She wants to be in on every photo
smiling back, over the shoulders
of those standing in the doorway
smiling back, directly at me
smiling back, through the camera's eye
to the person I was then
as if to say: "See what I have grown?"
These weeds.
I have spent thirty years talking about
how she baked four loaves of bread
every morning of her life
to anyone who would listen.
But would they understand the way
the table shook
when white to her elbows with flour
she kneaded her memories into loaves?
Making bread was her one small rise:
it seemed she pounded away
the day the gate was left open.
It is written in family legend:
the last six cows bloated from alfalfa
and they lost the farm.
She never gave up kneading the bread
till grandpa died. Nor gave up loving
my mother, who had left open the gate.
Now more than the pastures are gone.
The brick house four‑square is gone.
It went the way of the gate
swinging open for anyone who walked
over the threshold.
It went the way
of my grandfather's favorite table trick.
As Gram Hilma chortled in a side‑glance
he would line up the peas on his knife
and roll them down his curled tongue
a neat trick that turns into slavering
as the years bloated to the eightieth gate.
After Grandma's funeral
I went the way of their farm
on the prairie,
but the search did not open the gate.
I have spent thirty years
trying to imagine how her life
was all 16‑year‑old hope
the day Hilma Berhardina Ruthstrom
first crept out of the house
to go riding in the buggy
with George Frederick Clausen.
I did find the grass ruts of "The Place."
It was up near Boelus, Nebraska,
over a grassy sandhill
awash with grass blades full of sweet peas
and wild beds full of yeasty, white flowers.
Of course, the buggy was gone.
It always is.
I remember the night she slept in anger
on the kitchen floor
while her iron poster rocked like the table
feathers flying up like flour. He had been
her youngest, hanging greedily on to her nipples
until he was two, hanging on now, slavering
with just as much blind suckle
to the hot bitch in his mother's bed
the one she had shared with Grandpa the 52 years
before he went to the home.
I remember their final days, with Grandpa
slavering all night about the stink
of the dead woman under his bed.
In the last week of his life
the nurses robbed him of his one small dignity:
his old‑manhood lay exposed, flaccid
as he curled on his side on the hospital bed.
We averted our gaze to stare
at our futures out the dusty windows
of the County Home at Kearney.
Couldn't they have tried to imagine when he
was all sweet peas lined up on a blade?
Grandma's eyes did laugh, you know.
Before that last time when
with her elbows strapped to the bed
she could not even imagine
the amazing grace of her yeast rising.
As we sang ". . . how sweet the sound"
we had to make the memories shake for her.
Maybe he had really seen
‑‑ horrifying thought ‑‑
the dead woman under the bed.
As for the hot bitch,
she had to pass through the gate
with a brain tumor.
There wasn't anyone sucking
on that cow's teats then.
*Thirty of the poems of the poetry
collection about Nebraska are published
in Closing the Gate, Nightshade Press, Troy, Maine, 1993.
“Two Brazen Hussies,” Dramatic Reading, Arne B. Larson Concert Hall
The Shrine to Music Museum, The University of South Dakota, Vermillion, 1994
THE EDSOL MODEL, 1916
Faded flowers frame
the tiny, tin‑type coffin
of the boy who died.
Closing the Gate, Nightshade Press, 1993
the tiny, tin‑type coffin
of the boy who died.
Closing the Gate, Nightshade Press, 1993
THE EDSOL MODEL, 1916 ©
Faded flowers frame
the tiny, tin‑type coffin
of the boy who died.
Closing the Gate, Nightshade Press, 1993
NAVIGATING THE PLATTE ©
Watch where you walk
on the banks of the Platte.
Under the sand is a river of graves
overflowing with dreams
more than a century old
back when covered wagons
navigated the dry riverbed.
Watch where you walk
on the banks of the Platte.
The sand is quick
and quickening to life
heaving up with ice flows in winter
running to five channels in spring
but mostly a dry riverbed
where wheels sink to the rim
never to turn again.
Watch where you walk
on the banks of the Platte.
It was there they turned under
the graves and the buffalo grass
with heavy wooden plows, lumbering
deep in the cadaver loam
where they found new dreams
with each turn of the soil.
Watch where you walk
on the banks of the Platte
where you'll sink to the rim
never doubt it.
Closing the Gate, Nightshade Press, 1993
CLIPPED IN SNOW FLIGHT ©
All through the long night a late April snow‑gale
had blown great guns out of the north
blasting away at the old and the new growth.
The home-flock for once was curiously quiet
their beaks playing dead, tucked under wing
and their feathers puffed out ‑‑ even the mallards.
As I blew vapor rings through the morning chores,
my rubber boots crunched the stiff sand in discord
scattering the flock. And grey waves lapped
in misbeats at the sandpit's banks.
By noon the snow had all but melted
even though the overcast still promised chill.
So heavy with catkins were the limbs of the ground birch.
So heavy with self, I clipped the wings of the mallards
to trim their flight safe within my knowledge.
The wild ducks flapped within the boundary
of the snow fence, arrested now in chicken flight,
waddling like fat hens through the clumps of marshgrass.
With awkward stealth the mallards tried to hide
behind the willows, nursing the tips of their rudders.
I squatted, waiting until habit called the wild ones out.
The silt still clung heavily to their underwings
as they took to the water with the homeflock.
They were soon dipping under to catch icicle minnows.
As they swallowed, the water glistened
on their warm, moving gullets ‑‑ coming up only for air.
Satisfied, I retreated to the thicket of the house.
In the incubator I turned the speckled eggs
of mallards who would never know
the largesse of their "great god."
Soon a brown‑winged hen would become a mother
who coaxes her chicklets away from the water.
Just then–
I heard a great commotion of quacking and grackling.
And as habit would sometimes call me out
I peered through the blinds of the window,
to spy the prehistoric unimagined:
five great cranes, the so‑called whoopers.
Skimming the water were two pairs, and a smaller
with russet markings still tingeing its head.
The whole of me whirred with great flickering wingbeats.
The great phoenix of passage had risen
from the saltbeds of the ancient inland sea.
The chick‑sized homeflock waded at some distance
as the cranes claimed the sandpit's nearer banks
stalking over the damp sand in silent grandeur.
Alert, they launched their heavy bodies on the cold waves
buoyed up with the lift of their swanlike necks.
A restless mallard winged up on the farthermost shore
and the cold yellow eye of the largest whooper
seemed to catch mine where I stood at the window
commanding me to stay within my sanctuary
invoking me to incubate a sanctuary
lying without the boundaries of my knowledge
where I may count with undaunted hope
the days to hatching of the rusty‑colored chicklet –
where I may fly with the young whooper in new sight
to skim northern lakes as the ice is breaking
to sail across the northern coastal tundra
a kingdom cousined with ptarmigan and snow geese
to prance upon thickly bedded reindeer moss
where I may soar above the prairie in fall flight
to migrate to the southern salt‑water delta
to winter unafraid from the raids of
turkey vultures, egg‑seeking raccoons
and people at windows who clip back fearful flight.
To be a whooper now strutting on the muddy bank
chucking errant shoots of new growth.
With a clear trumpet sound and a sudden flapping
the guard bird broke the impasse of my reverie
and turned all the world into water.
The other whoopers quickly joined in the slapping.
The homeflock scattered with me on the wind‑swept waves.
War hoops geared up the whoopers' anchored bodies.
They charged headlong toward the mudbank
on the wing‑tips of doubtful flight.
Their immense wings pounded upward in short arcs
until the juggernauts became airborne.
Their churr, churr, churr filled the sky
as they spiraled ever upward toward the hidden sun.
The great cranes glided from safe sight
over the cottonwoods ‑‑ out of my knowledge.
Clipped in snow flight, this wild one came up for air.
One Summer Day We Felt Like Writing
University of New Mexico Honors Program
Interdisciplinary, Writing Institute
Teaching Fellow, Summer 1987
“Two Brazen Hussies,” With Bonnie Brown
Dramatic Reading, Arne B. Larson Concert Hall
The Shrine to Music Museum, The University of South Dakota, Vermillion, 1994
Recitation, Opening Ceremony
1999 International Festival of the Cranes
New Mexico Technical Institute
Socorro, New Mexico
FARWELL©
I do not know the mystery of it all.
I do know I feel like a wilted white
flower, dying in the wind
because I have not yet spoken
of my heart for The Plains
in a meaningful way. I feel
like a corn nymph lying unseen
on the warmed ground of
a grassy hillside, on the edge
of sleep, a book opened over
my chest, inhaling the smell
of the green, surfeit in ways
that cannot be described.
Vice and Verse, Ah! University of Nebraska at Kearney, 2006
RED CLOUD ©
When the Platte River was mid‑summer dry
from bank to bank
we would dig dog‑like into the river of sand
with the burnt tincans
from an old campfire
showering our backs as we threw the sand high
over our aching shoulders
coating each other with fine grains
our bodies sparkling hot
in the convivial sun.
Until we squared out waterboats, plumbing
the hidden river
water rising in the bows, and still we scooped
through the soupy sand as the muddy water
seemed to flood the crafts.
Then we lay back, cargo submerged, gingerly
as if not to overturn
our loads into the sand. For hours our eyes scaled
cumulus mountains, until a red sky
would call us in
before the sudden rain could sink our boats,
filling us with sand.
Navigating the Platte, Ohio University , Creative Thesis, 1986.
Past President's Award, Anthology, 1987
National Federation of State Poetry Societies
The Pearl, The University of New Mexico
Alliance for Academic Excellence, 1987
Closing the Gate, Nightshade Press, 1993
Liver of the White Buffalo, dedicated to son, John Kevin Childers, 2002
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
THE ICE CREEK POPSICLE KNOWS ©
He never heard of the noble red man.
But his high-cheeked Cherokee bones
catch the glare of the ice
as the soles of his hip boots slip and slide
on the cold stones of Ice Creek.
With a thick, stiffened hold on the aching metal
he chips away at the ice
and releases the muskrat
from the underwater trap.
Now, his hands have forgotten the morning pain.
As he rocks before the cast-iron stove
sinuous with satisfaction
he thaws out the day
turning his red, swollen palms
in the warmth of the fire.
The pelts are already stretched
taut on their frames
inside-out, hanging wet and high
over the boxes of Christmas bulbs
in the trapper's shed given over to family.
He leans to loosen his boot strings,
and with a sigh older than breath
he thinks ahead to the supper of
side-back bacon, brown beans
and bread in a skillet.
Later, with stocking feet,
he will suck on a popsicle, nodding off in the chair
waiting for the sleep before the morning thaw
to check out the ginseng patches
even his sons have failed to find.
He now trusts his hands
to work a little more
on the yellowed tooth
the jagged edge of his tongue stinging
with the taste of Prince Albert
in a can. Tobacco has stained his forefinger
since the age of twelve.
Dentists have been extracted
from the out-of-doors, high and dry.
They are too far removed from Christmas.
The stain of his teeth may have tinged orange.
But the daily walks in the hills
have muscled out an Indian cunning
and muscled in a hunter's eye.
The doctors cannot believe his metal.
But neither do they believe in
the healing power of ginseng.
They ask why he waited so long to act
after the pain had hung on like frostbite.
He replies:
The only metal he trusts is his own
and his gunmetal squint locked down
on the trunk of a birch
where a hint of a movement
locks eye with eye
before he talks himself into the shot.
He has learned to handle the recoil.
He fancies himself Sergeant York:
slow to anger, sloth to kill.
But his ears no longer can hear
the sound of the water wearing away at the stone.
Nor can they detect
the stealth of the cancer.
Nor is the growth on his stomach
slow to anger, sloth to kill.
He steels himself and hangs in the waiting.
He knows the gun barrel nip
of Mountain Dew
cannot even wound
this feral animal of pain.
-- To Popsicle Childers
ZEPHYR EAR ©
I
hope
this
is
the
last
report
I shall ever hear.
Wind in the leaves;
the fistulous rustling:
It riffles my symmetry
as only the warm gusts
can turn and thrill
a thousand inner
cracklings:
pop-pop
zephyr
ear.
TO
JOYCE KILMER
SOLDIER POET
From Zephyr Ear: My Way of Knowing¸2002
dedicated to
Jessica Faye Childers Gomez
The Child of Mother Earth
Liver of the White Buffalo, 2002
dedicated to
John Kevin Childers,
The Most Creative Person I know
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