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 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

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