Toys In the Attic

Your Toys  

I had my favorites but father

time or what passes for,

whisked them off stage by the end

of the opening act. Fat maple

pegs and mommy’s mixing bowls

gave way to bags of injection

molded plastic soldiers sighting rifles

thin as grass blades, duty bound

to do the bidding of a fumbling god.

The best of them draw and hold

the attention of the bossy matryoshka

humming in our head, soaking

up every jot and tittle, conducting

symphonies of reach and grasp,

weaving stories out of whole cloth

to explain what can’t be explained.

Out of necessity Abraham Lincoln

whittled his own out of hickory.

Human skulls and scorpion fights

kept Alexander occupied waiting

on greatness to arrive.

Heaven for me is watching you light

on one after another, pollenating

the world one grain at a time, the man

you’ll become a dot on the far horizon  

homing in on my outstretched hand.

  

Cocktail party

Drover

“Now, you take cattle drives”,

five words overheard at a cocktail party

draw you like a magnet to a clutch

of people, academics mostly, maybe

a few hotshot dotcom vacqueros bolting

Colonel E.H. Taylor Bottled-In-Bond

bourbon, desperate for purchase

as puppies on teats. Stetson

big as the Magic Fountain of Montjuïc,

pearlescent buttons, matched mother of pearl

handled six shooters, Sam Elliot, the hope

as you shoe horn in, sharp elbows

shucking an oyster, expecting a pearl.

Beeves are to blue bonnets, longhorns to lies,

for all I know, but that doesn’t stop me

from painting wordy Remington’s

evoking time on the Chisolm and nights

in the saloons and whorehouses of Abilene.

I return the nod and tip my glass in tacit

complicity, pale natives of northern latitudes,

accustomed to conspicuous plentitude,

keeper, each of the other’s secrets.

 

West of Houston

The Brazos

On a bender in Richmond the river bellows

filthy corridos then drops his pants and assumes

a stance, the last thing he remembers before everything

goes black. Coming to, there’s no ignoring

the nasty gash and disgorged issue stinking in the flat

light of day. Fetal curl around the oxbow, moaning

low beyond the cotton woods, he cradles  

the battered face of Richmond Trailer Village

and murmurs something in Spanish, metallic

exhalations that sound to me like words of regret,  

a man who may not speak the language,

but knows his constellations, the accumulation

of old scars on her once pretty face.