Poetry

Take a tractor 2″ radiator hose about 2′ long 
and a bicycle tire inner tube 
Cut out a 3′ section to slide down inside the hose
leaving 6″ out at each end
At one end fold the tube back over the hose 
securing it with a rubber band
Do the same at the other end
but before you do
pour some hot water (100 degrees)
between tube and hose
and seal it in as above
Then take your test tube and rubber flange
slide it over one end and secure
Astroglide jelly up the other end
Now you’re ready for the bull
When he goes to mount the cow
slip the rig over his budelia

and Bob’s your uncle

Pride is a hard and bitter pill to swallow
having to take back a firm decision
like swearing to be a lifetime vegetarian
or follow the simple life like Thoreau

I said I’d do without machines forever 
Dig my fields by spade and cut my fuel 
by hand and tote my crops by wheelbarrow
unbothered by machines Never say never

Children grow and shoes and teeth are costly
Time is shorter and my muscles grow weary
Meat seems good chain saws cut more quickly
Thoreau was single the simple life seems hollow
I make excuses as I succumb to progress
but pride is still a bitter pill to swallow

And yet though pride may be a bitter pill
does not mean that I have given up
Today tomorrow I’ll still try to cut
my stove wood with a buck saw and to till
my fields in one manner or another
and hope that woodsmoke clings to my clothing
rich and pungent and that the wind will sing
on my face again over and over

I would hope to keep in my own employ
singing jigs for coins poems for joy
Perhaps I will become a wandering minstrel
pastoral still but restless all quite strange
to me who has roots down that are rural

The only permanence we know is change

Westerly end hitched to an elm
sunrise end to a wooden post
my hammock swings in the generous host
of the shade of late afternoon
I lie here in the cooling breeze
and through the slits of lazy eyes
the undulating meadow flows
to the distant maple row

I am dozing but not long
Comes the pad of bare feet among
the ferns by the pebbled path
It is the children from their nap
Heidi and Bronwen tumble in with me
their bare fat bodies still warm from sleep
They wiggle and giggle and say
Let’s go to England Papa today

One shove of the foot against the elm root
and we’re off for old England in a cloth boat
sailing over the children’s sea
so green with lush clover and tall timothy