Cleaned Elk Carcass—Gros Ventre Canyon, WY

just bones and fur
white
butt tufts

Kiwi and the Malaysian Guy

Hard gravelly right turn—nice shady picnic grounds.
Brown van I’d noticed earlier pulled up just as I did.
Skinny guy got out, might be Malaysian.
Noticed my MN license—How many miles?
—Really a lot, I said.
Gave him a rundown of my trip so far.
—Family everywhere! he marveled.
—Well, I’m going for a stroll around, I said.
Walked to the end of the grounds and peed—
left quite a puddle in a tree-root canal.

When I walked back, the Malaysian guy
was taking a Spanish-style guitar out of his van
and propping it against a tree.
He’d already put a big parrot cage on a picnic table,
and the parrot was perched on the open cage door—
luminescent green tufts around its neck—
no fear of it flying away—
—She like boys, the Malaysian guy said.
—What’s her name?
—Kiwi.
It was obvious, Kiwi was quite comfortable with me there,
just treading the top wire of the cage door
and muttering pleasantly to herself.
What a happy bird!
—Are the mountains coming soon?
—We’d be seeing them already if it wasn’t so hazy.

I guess he was planning to play his guitar for a while,
with Kiwi perched there with him,
and then continue on up the pass.
I think he wanted me to stick around,
and I actually thought of getting my mandolin out of my car,
and Kiwi didn’t mind.
I wanted to take their picture—the skinny Malaysian guy
and Kiwi swinging almost perpendicular on the open bird-cage door—
but it seemed intrusive to ask,
and now I have no proof they exist.

What I Put Up With From These People

inch-thick stick
twisted from fallen trunk

impressed for fording stream
rushing across trail

(pretty bark-ribbon handle
admired by daughter)

but they crapped out
second crossing

rapids faster by the hour
hot day

the ones with the car keys
went forward without sticks

I walked the ones without car keys
back to the road

now propped against a pack

containing too little water

Not Into the Woods Yet

86-year-old Donald
got lost this morning trying to find
the path that used to go past Buster’s barn,
where Buster kept
the Model-A he used for his sawmill.

Not sure if the Model-A
was hooked up to the sawmill somehow
to make it run,
or whether Buster used the Model-A
to drive the cut timber down.

Anyway, Donald
walked out of the woods this morning,
burrs in his socks,
sweat all over the front of his tee-shirt,
dried blood all down his left forearm.

“That didn’t work!” he said.

My Esmeralda Summer

Saw Tom’s church today—impressive—
got to ring the bell—
hard to hear from in there, they warned me—

I pulled on the corded rope
Quasimodo-hard—
like hitting a lever with a sledge hammer—

like, maybe I’m strong,
but what the use of ringing a bell?—I could
barely hear—voices

of children, otherworldly, transmitted
through a telephone connection from the Castle?
Or were they tintinnabulating Ode to Joy,

tune played by Tom’s telephone-answering
machine at home—and,
not coincidentally,

tune I played on the piano in Spearfish,
as Tom’s son Simon walked up the aisle
with his fiance Alex Fay?

Or was it the song my sister
Emily crooned to herself next day while waiting
to be driven to her flight : I’m dreaming

of a white Christmas
just like all the Christmases I used to know,
where the tree tops glisten and children listen

to hear Pepsi Maxes in the snow.
I’m dreaming of a white Christmas,
with every Pepsi Max card I write,

may your days be merry and light, 

and may all your Pepsi Maxes
be bright! Goodnight, everybody!

All the Way Up to the Point

They had to write apology letters—
all five of them—
because they wrapped him up
in a volleyball net.
And it was kind of bad, because it was
around his neck,
and he couldn’t breathe.
It was the kind of thing
where he was probably having fun
all the way up to the point
where he wasn’t.

Dewey Profane

Profane—chalal—
before (outside) the Temple.
Therefore, unholy. Polluted.
“Thou, O deadly wounded wicked one,
the prince of Israel,” says Ezekiel (21;25),
speaking of Dewey.

But Dewey don’t
want to desecrate the Temple;
they just don’t set foot inside it.
Mary, Mother of Jesus,
was raised in the Temple—expelled
when her menses profaned it.

Dewey left the Temple same time Mary did.
Became a Philistine, like Ruth.

Skeleton Just West of the Wide Missouri—Chamberlain, SD

my dust blows in these winds
bones of the mothers lying under
each rounded hill

Dowsing

My expectant writing state—
like listening for bird calls,
attempting to shovel a glimpse into the ditch
of what existence means.

But its just more ink—
more scrawlings on more notebook pages.
Or let me die!
The idea is, each moment

must be a reckoning
in which life’s deep intention is manifest.
But it’s never anything
but the chatter of a wren in the trees,

the ringing of wind chimes,

the soft purr of consciousness half asleep—
slow beating of my heart
that wants more.

Alien

To grow up in a society
that regulates the bodily functions,
so that people can’t behold
their physical selves without shame.
How oppressive would that be!

How lucky Dewey is
to be outside of governance!
But Dewey is unhouseled.
When they die, they will have no funeral,
no gravestone.

There’s a word in sociology
for people like Dewey—alien.
Dewey doesn’t belong to a church,
and has no stake in any
rational humanist viewpoint.

Does Dewey lack confidence
in a moral system?
Seems simple. Don’t hurt others.
Try to work for the common good.
But if by “common good”

you mean what’s good for humans only,
it seems immoral to Dewey.
Only what’s good for all life
can be good—humanity
just a tiny part.

Dewey fully believes
that the system that keeps
them fed and clothed and provides
health care and all is based
on an evil that is destroying the world.

In the meantime, Dewey

can have a pleasant morning
scantily clad on the back porch,
feeling the breeze on their limbs,
writing in their notebook.

Running Barefoot to Paradise

To think about war and to
find what will suffice—
what will suffice a tough assignment
in the face of war.

To think about the state and to
try to refuse the abuse—
refusing not an option
in the file drawer of the state.

To cry in your boots and to

try to find the will to live again—
to live again a doubtful gambit
if you’re wearing shoes.

Irregular, Disorganized Rhythms

colleague—never nice
a writing-cities connection
never friend
died gym happened
sweets Dewey-love sitting on
the self-love with Bill found for
their community-4th tryst

AIDS does July in lump
just too severely sad to see
Bill-and and Dewey-but
he at much the up
he too now the best
drinking-Bill whose chest
shows pouch fibrillation

sad couplet and luckily
Bill to slut Dewey 
longed to become
defibrillator-zap
Dewey unsuspecting
of father once teacher to years
but time holds no brief

for Bill's hard chest emergency
implanted when too
young for anything
saw their father work martinis
behave like nearly everything
yet said a stranger
not once wasn’t

_______________________

The 4^th of July barbecue was too much sitting.
Dewey just came to show off their legs.

Nice seeing Bill after his emergency,
and the pouch in his chest where the defibrillator is—
Bill an old grad school and work colleague—
never an actual friend—
a gay man
(not a slut like Dewey),
a writing teacher at Minnesota Community and Technical College—
about the best teaching job you can get in the Twin Cities.

Last time they saw Bill three years ago,
he said he’d given up sweets and was drinking martinis instead,
but just a couple.
Since then, he’s had ventricular fibrillation and nearly died,
and now he has the lump.
It's gone off once, but it wasn’t severely painful—
just like getting a strong push in the chest.
He was at the gym when it happened, he said.

Sad to see old associates who’ve had to come to grips with death,
as Dewey luckily has not as yet.
How will their self-love prosper when it does happen?
It will be fascinating to find out for sure
if anything could ever dampen it.

Dewey’s strongest connection to Bill—

Bill once saw Dewey’s father play Pastor Manders in Ghosts
for a director who, I believe,
died of AIDS.

Hippolytus

Hippolytus didn’t rape Phaedra.
Why did Phaedra say they did
in that letter found on her corpse?
Dewey hates her gratuitous vindictiveness,
(like their namesake, Dewey Dell’s,
when she set that barn on fire).

But Phaedra was under the spell
of Venus, who has no scruples whatsoever.
Hippolytus themselves were not
under it—that’s
what Venus was mad about. So,
Phaedra’s vengeful malice.

Why can’t Hippolytus be understood
simply as a non-cisgender
devotee of the Huntress God?
(Stevie Smith says “prig,” but, actually,
Hippolytus may have been
an Amazon with a penis.)

Because Venus won’t allow it, that’s why.
The witch!
Is it OK to call Venus a witch?.
If not, Dewey humbly and fearfully withdraws the word,
and will dedicate to Venus
an evil-averting hecatomb of feelies.

Dewey themselves are

under Venus's spell,
so they have nothing to worry about.