Here are three poems that came from notes I wrote while at my friend’s place along Mill Creek in Paradise Valley, Montana.

At Mill Creek Last May

Shot the head off a pigeon and felt terrible about it.
Went to buy whiskey.
Drank red wine and ate.
Drank whiskey and read.
Smoked a cigar.
Answered some emails.
Got two rejections from editors.
Listened to the water.
Wondered stuff about who I am.
Women with their bodies, they need to take great care.
Rolled with the dog on the front lawn.
Ate yogurt and drank coffee on the foot bridge.
Full moon and the race runs deep.
Meadow lights up like her eyes.
High clouds don’t move.
Water again, still more, lucky more.
Gravel’s yellow under headlights.
I converse with a great-horned owl.
When I stop, he keeps speaking.

Mortality or Another Dog Sonnet

Watching the dog made alert
by groundhogs, I’ve forgotten
I am lost between trees and water
and sky. He’s lying by the log

where they hide
distracted by falling cotton,
by the chime of wind
the applause of rushing water

scattered ravens on the grass
and a hundred bits of scent
swirling past in air
he lifts his nose to breathe.

He gets up and lopes back to me.
He doesn’t know he’s beautiful.

———————————————————————–

Sometimes Sonnet

Sometimes the water in the race
turns to blood, all the blood
in all the people who ever lived
in this valley.

The breeze blowing
the leaves of the cottonwood
and box elder is the breath
of everybody who has ever breathed,

and the leaves dancing all the dancers
who have ever danced and the birds
singing are all the singers singing
all the songs ever sung.

I particularly feel this now
as I write this poem.