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February 4, 2017: poem for alys

My friend Bill Schmidtkunz wrote the following poem.   This poem seems most fitting in that while some of the details are fictive, the account of the life lived here is nonfictive.  Thanks Bill

these are not Heidi's goats
dancing in buttercups with grandpa playing on accordion
smoking his herbal pipe
joy in alpine meadows never ending

i walk out to thirty below barn
headlamp sun
something rude and hungry kicking at the door
"i could be in bed asshole
and you could be in the freezer
never forget that"
asshole knows, i'm a vegetarian
i lost this hand long ago
and now i'm just making sense of the routines
that make up my life

hay and warm water and grain
we both smell bad
looking up
the moon awakens a sense of purpose and place
i notice the dipper over the horse stall
"this is my life exempt from public haunt"
things settle down
in the stall
in the mind

i suppose i could have chosen a different path
but looking back
i can see how all the roads i took
all the roads i evaded
lead me here
to these animals
this land
and that man
and now, here i am

my tears
i shed them once again under the moon
they burn hot down my checks toward a frozen dawn
makes me step back a bit
i am so lucky
i will go back inside
make some small racket with the water buckets
get a noisy fire working in the wood-stove
then find that man
tell him
here i am
tell him to lay me down in the buttercups
tell him to take me

these are not Heidi's goats
dancing in buttercups with grandpa playing on accordion
smoking his herbal pipe
joy in alpine meadows never ending


Next: 36.2/5/17: Stupor Bowl Sunday



 

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