When I was eighteen I took a year off from college. I worked various jobs. One of those jobs was on a cattle ranch in Eastern Colorado, a vast, arid place. I quickly learned that ranching is often solitary work:

The Lonesome Cowboy

Listening to AM, because that’s all there is,

In the truck, alone, driving country roads.

Here comes that Ricky Nelson song, 

About a garden party

He attended with regret,

For the hundredth goddam time.

I am, without a doubt, 

The loneliest goddam cowboy 

In the state of Colorado.   

—

When our daughter was sixteen we began taking college trips. This is about one of those trips, my wife and daughter having an adventure on their own:

Piglet and Pooh Have an Adventure In the Wide World

They are gone into the Wide World

My Piglet and Pooh.

Though their Return is certain—

Battered they will be.

There are Dangers out there:

Scary Things and Getting Lost,

All of which they will confront.

Tonight, safe abed, each

(Piglet, Pooh, and I) will think

To ourselves of Success and Home and Hearth.

And while Piglet sleeps the sleep of youth,

Pooh will rest her head upon my shoulder

And Dream of Places she has been.

—

I grew up in Chicago, but went to college in Oregon. I often went camping on weekends, sometimes alone, sometimes not. This is about a trip to the high desert with a friend. A pretty good friend.

If a visual aid would help:

http://www.oregonstateparks.org/index.cfm?do=parkPage.dsp_parkPage&parkId=36

Sage

is the aromatic Salvia

     the high desert bloom,

     the one odor I would retrieve, 

     the scent of inland Oregon.

are the hills 

     are the exposed ridges and ribbons 

     of hard rock that remain, the soft scree 

     having flowed down river to the ocean.

is the scent 

     I choose to associate with you,

     and the night we spent under the stars, 

     the red rocks behind us, the river running near.

—

This is a deceptively simple poem. Ranchers, of which I am one, and farmers have a long and animus-laden history. Those feelings are almost gone, but not quite. I see a fundamental difference between the two, hard to put into words, but, farmers are over-fed ole lard-asses that sit on a tractor all day, and spend an inordinate amount of time at the cafe, while ranchers are tough hombres, plain and simple. Something like that. This little poem reflects my sentiment.

Fun With Farmers

Feasting on fatty french fries,

five florid farmers, famished,

flopped on their fannies

at the fast food franchise,

philosophize on fields of flora.

—

After college my wife to be and I moved to Missouri, we began ranching. I seem to have written about ten thousand depressing poems on drought and the other miseries of ranching. I can't stand to even look at them, but I found this among the wreckage:

Rave on John Donne, I Have to Mow the Lawn

In fertile fields the wild oats you sowed,

Maidens reaped by witted scythe, lyric voice, 

Innocent head or heart, their gift of choice,

While I my sunnied lawn have weekly mowed.

Newly wed my true pledge and I 

Abed did one another vie to best

Each other in such warm and sweet caress,

A gift of ecstasy before we sigh 

(A glimpse of Paradise before we die).

But now we vie to offer love with more

Of what our aging hearts do truly seek:

Which of us, thee or I, this summered week

Will clip the wild blade, ted’ous summer chore,

Thereby earn the other’s love, one week more.