23 Nov Back 40: Ouzel
More a blur or mere winged premise of a bird in flight, he lit from nowhere on a mid-stream stone, studied me a bit, squat-jigged on a fringe of ice, blinked twice and went on diving riffles, unruffled, alone. ...
29 Sep Back 40: Dream Hunt
One night it will just pass Plain in the firelight. That thing you’ve been Hunting for so long, Suddenly right in front of you, Unafraid. As if everything, The cunning traps, The dogged trailing, Was all just for show. Some elaborate ceremony Of the inevitable. And now this No desperate chase, No revelatory Final showdown, Just a gentle meeting of eyes, A...
05 Aug Back 40: Gratitude
I’m driving the long way home. Meandering along a backroad meadow where I’ve stalled to breathe and watch the horses play. Let their blood and flesh, grazing knee-deep in fireworks of wildflowers, lift me. Why do I say “play?” Horses I’ve known up close shudder and twitch with nervous alert. Poor brutes, fenced to boredom, plagued with...
02 Jun Back 40: All Gifts
All gifts are temporary The sun, the moon, the stars Stripes on the backs of chipmunks Beaver tracks in the mud. This morning It was a troop of robins Busking for worms Their bouncing advancements timed To a foghorn of cows. Meanwhile The rising sun Didn’t believe in a thing Not me, not you And the...
04 Feb Back 40: While Casting for Trout
The delicate, white-feather legs of a thistle seed run upstream with the wind. The fragile physics of a miniature tumbleweed ballet make it magically spin against the weight of mountains while standing still until this exquisite balance fails and must wait to find its moment again downstream from where you brace your feet against the...
11 Dec Back 40: Invisible
Last night, snow swathed the meadow. This morning we scroll the window shades and trace nature’s busy history of trails, hooves and clawed footfalls crisscrossing acres blanketed white. Such complicated comings and goings, traversing so nearby while we slumbered unsuspectingly. Deer, elk, rabbit, squirrel, raccoon, milling about the moonless overcast midnight. Even now, invisible birds...
17 Oct Back 40: Autumn’s Brown Grass
Autumn’s brown grass is a heart beating for winter, for spring that becomes summer, for summer that fades to autumn and autumn’s brown grass. Autumn’s brown grass is a heart beating for bears and wolves, their bodies moving, then stopping, then moving again across open miles of autumn’s brown grass. Autumn’s brown grass is a heart...
09 Aug Back 40
Home Beside the weathered garden gate Down at the old home place, A withered wildflower Lies peaceful and still, Too faded, too weak to bare its face. The intrepid spirit of fragrant youth Fell languid beneath the sun; A pale and weary traveler, Whose race was briefly run. The barren earth is warm at last...
10 Jun Back 40: The Rest is Smoke
His brother grew smaller and smaller as the train pulled away. Finally, there was nothing left. He remembered the scene while standing in the modest darkness of a summer dusk on a hillside north of Deer Lodge, Montana, silent like his nearby friends as they listened to, and even slightly felt, nighthawks diving and swooping past like half-glimpsed truths....
12 Feb Back 40: Big Fish
I want to catch a big fish the biggest a trout with a heavy wide tail big eyed and a big mouth a fish I can be proud of a legacy trout something to never again match or forget I want a fish that ends it all but not quite yet...