The Weaning Pen

Mother kept the memory
of the early weanings
when I was to young to understand
the din that frightened me.
The house wasn’t as separated
from the working ranch
and the distraught mother cows
were right outside our windows.
She remembered my fright.
I wish I could remember how
she comforted me.

I do remember my part
as a teenage cowboy
in the separating pens.
The old man at the gate
working us cowhands
just like the cattle.
We all danced to his tune,
but it was the weanlings and their mothers
that paid the piper.
The cows and calves bawling back and forth
further from my window
but this time blaming me.

Until the third night
their new life begun as quiet reigned.
The mothers back to pasture
the weanlings at the trough.
Cotton seed meal
slacking a greater hunger
so that each morning I was the mother
spilling open the hundred pound sacks
as they pressed close.

I was always coy about their fate
careful not to tell them why I seemed so kind.
Of course they wouldn’t have understood
that it was me I was protecting,
posturing in the face of my own weaning soon to come,
wearing a brave face before an agitated mind,
pretending that true love doesn’t matter
if it can be taken away without one's consent.

Haunted Heart

How many live in the moment
ignoring desire
confusing the will to live
with the need to bypass the friction
that is a greater hurt than death
a reach for a feeling of peace
beyond the nipping jackals of rectitude

I dream of pushing you in a swing
your toes touching the clouds
your laughter drawing the children near
each time higher until I fear you won't come down
I hear you tell the swallows
how does he make sense of his longing
when living with a haunted heart

Blacksburg

We each take a bullet when an innocent is murdered.
We each take a slap when an epithet is hurled.
We can look into the eyes of our neighbor
and never know anything beyond their color.
We can plan our day with naivete of habit,
but, everyone else is planning theirs.
The president said you were in the wrong place
at the wrong time, but I disagree.
You were in the right place
you were there as you should have been.
It was the malevolence that intruded,
an anguished soul with no voice of his own,
a tormented soul that needed help to cry.

Nothing is Straight Away

I'll never forget your touch
or the hunger it foretold
and how we fended off the appetite
that only sin could decipher

If it is wrong of me to love you
than the world turns on a blind axis
if my love is impertinent
then daylight is a ruse