Cowboys and Angels

This poem was inspired by an article from a British journal that discusses using email and other asynchronous online forums for counseling. The author, Jeannie Wright, mentions that online counseling is beneficial for people, who due to to geography or disabilities, cannot physically attend face-to-face counseling sessions. Why am I reading articles like this? Well, I'm doing some preliminary work for my dissertation on writing as therapy. Fun!

Cowboys and Angels

Beyond windowpane
snow drifts from slate clouds,
collapsing soundless
to cover earth, animal, barn, house,
anything left bare to the elements.
Endless expanses of Canadian prairie
rest dormant, waiting for spring to chase
negative temperatures, renew life, thaw hearts.
Sheltered from the cold night,
a rancher sits at his computer,
attempting to make a connection
that geography forbids.
He logs on, accesses through passwords,
and wanders from room to room,
chatting with others.
“Hw r u?”
“Gr8.”
Later, a woman reads
beauty in snow-topped mountains,
messages of loneliness and cold,
pride in ranching and surviving.
Through her open window
soft breezes tickle curtains,
rearrange ends of her hair,
cool flushes of interest
blooming across her cheek.
She doesn’t hear the ocean’s roar
just beyond glass and screen
or the ring of cell phone
as a man passes on the sidewalk.
In fact, she cannot hear
even the muted hum
her computer generates as she types.
But she can imagine the silence
the man up north describes,
the isolation it brings a heart.
She can convey the warmth
of a gentle word whispering
through her keyboard
and into the dark.
Despite space,
no matter disability,
they enjoy the relief
another soul brings.

Unwilling Lurker

Unwilling Lurker

He clings, desperate.
This is not how it’s supposed to be.
Summer is waxing;
days are long.
Temperatures should climb,
even at this early hour.
But, he’s cold,
too cold.
He cannot fly,
much less sweep to the arm
held so tantalizingly near.
He’s trapped,
limbs clamped to screen door.

His size, a full inch from head to tail,
cannot assist him here,
nor can ebony wings
marked with white design.
His needle,
dreaded torture device,
instigator of scratching ,
remains useless,
a prisoner against the mesh.

The sun will rise and warm him,
instantaneously bestowing flight,
but not if the woman sipping coffee
notices him lurking and swats,
killing the dratted mosquito.

Man in Black

This week in class, we listened to a Johnny Cash song ("Long Black Veil") and wrote down sensory images that the sound of his voice or the words in the song inspired. We were supposed to write images for each of the five senses and create a more formalized poem (i.e. each line beginning with a variant of "This song feels like..."). But, as usual, I didn't follow directions. For one thing, I don't usually catch smells or tastes on paper well. For another, I shy away from these really structured poems generally. So, combining found poetry (titles and/or phrases from Cash's songs) with mainly sight images, here's a listing poem.

Man in Black

Thunder, rumble in the dark
hum of a bear fresh from his den
cocaine blues wrapped in long black veil
humble stone waiting at open grave
noble, human soul consumed in ring of fire
drum of train, prowling side of mountain
ebon shadow, mumble in the night
Sunday mornin’ comin’ down
growl of diesel engine, primitive, unyielding
croon of swarthy lover, persuading wary prey
walk the line written in jet upon an onyx page
growl soaked in whiskey and smoke
howling to Folsom barbed wire
defiant, killing just to watch death soak the page,
wretched solitary man
desolate phantom immune to a lullaby
fear cloaked in midnight, wonder, and hurt
Ghost Rider,
Highwayman
hound of hell and redemption

The Slow Dissolve

I created the following movie about my dad for one of my doctoral classes. The course discusses critical literacy, basically how does one teach those who might be more concerned about survival (food, shelter, etc). We looked closely at Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire as well as a few other texts (Bomer & Bomer, Christiansen, Baol). When it came time for my project, I wanted to do something different--not a lesson plan or an in-service or stuff like that (those they are all good topics)--something creative. So, I put audio recordings of my father singing behind pictures of him and poetry that I wrote within the last two years of his life, the time that his Alzheimer's was at its worst.

Writing has always been a way for me to understand or at least think through a problem or an emotion. This project was no different.