Issue 8

September 2001

Walt McDonald

 

I was a U.S. Air Force pilot, taught at the U.S. Air Force Academy, and am Texas Poet Laureate for 2001. Some of my recent books are All Occasions (University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), Blessings the Body Gave and The Flying Dutchman (Ohio State, 1998, 1987), Counting Survivors (Pittsburgh, 1995), Night Landings (Harper & Row, 1989), and After the Noise of Saigon (Massachusetts, 1988).

My poems have been in journals including Envoi, London Review of Books, Orbis, Stand Magazine, Staple, and--in the USA--in APR, The Atlantic Monthly, New York Review of Books, and Poetry.

http://english.ttu.edu/faculty/McDonald/

My listing in the web site of the Academy of American Poets is:

http://www.poets.org/wmcd

 

Turning Sixty Five in Montana

Another old man is up, naked bulb
in his den, dazzling the pre-dawn dark
across the valley. It's old Mr. Johnson,
who lives alone after his wife died

in Nebraska. He bought the Rogers' place,
after their daughter hauled them both
to a rest home. Somebody else is up,
car headlights bright, then blurred by curves,

heading to work or the rest home.
My wife will rise in an hour, come out
in her coat with coffee. We'll rock
on the deck and catch the first crow's caw,

sips cooling fast as sunrise, stiff fingers
hooked around gold-rimmed china cups,
gifts one year from our children
waking soon in cities far away.

 

Grandfather's Ranch in Comanche

Grandfather caught ponies without a rope
and touched them, gentled when he led them
to the barn. He cast a shadow long as horses.

My brother and I heard how he walked,
how softly he talked, teasing them tame
with clicking sounds. All summer, we gulped,

clicking our tongues to find that glottal stop.
He taught us to ride and turned us loose,
old rancher retired and branded by the sun,

his forehead white without his hat,
older than the portrait Grandmother hung
for all grandkids to see.

We begged him to show his badge, wounds
and sheriff's gun, tell about the last
pitched battle on the plains.

When we found arrowheads in canyons,
we believed, evidence of things
not seen, bones turning back to dust.

 

No Pets Allowed

We saw boys eager in a car, their father
buying ice cream. Their collie watched
the cream cones handed back, licking his chops
like cartoon dogs. I said That's Yeller,
that's my dog--and I was a boy again,
the year he died, knowing the thrill of Fetch,
Go catch the ball. Grow up, she said,
recalling pets we raised for our children,
how many dogs that hobbled in the yard
at twelve, had to be carried and put to sleep.
How simple sixty feels, how easy to load the Jeep

and go, staying at condos with warning cards
on the doors, No pets. Grow up, she said,
No pets. She means, not yet. For now we're back
in mountains, no dog to walk at roadside parks
or leave with neighbors, no baby beds
to load, toddlers to point to, Look, a train!
But look who's buying cards for each grandchild,
pictures of long-necked swans and cranes,
chipmunks and deer, and big-horned sheep.
Wish you were here, she writes to each
and means it, kisses she sends a thousand miles.

First published in Defined Providence.

 

Guitars We Didn't String

Dogs keep coming back
no matter how many mutts we rescue,
dumped out of city cars, forgotten.
Who do they think will feed them?
Our fields are cotton and rabbits

no city dogs could catch.
We came here to be alone,
nothing but cotton to save us
after Saigon, not cattle or goats,
the nearest neighbor miles away.

Here's a telephone we didn't string,
barbed wire, a cellar of cobwebs.
This far in the country, nobody stopped
for years but peddlers lugging samples.
They thought we'd buy with both hands,

begging for conversation. Now,
how many hogs have we fed with rabbits
caught by dogs we've trained in country ways.
We confess we need more than stalks,
that war a chain we've dragged for decades.

Dogs for sale: Our sign lures widows,
fathers of birthday girls and boys.
We meet a county's needs with orphans,
abandoned pets. Neighbors send cousins
to buy our dogs, a steady cycle of friends.

Often at Earl's, we join them.
They laugh and brag about stunts
they've done, the tales dog owners swap,
mellow as songs from a jukebox,
the noise of guitars and ordinary songs.

First published in Mississippi Valley Review.

© Walt McDonald

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