Poem

I recently read Francis Parkman's account of adventuring on the Oregon Trail. He seemed fearless in the face of so many fearful things. It prompted me think about my own relationship to "dangers" of my time and to write about it. Old books to new ideas. I love reading, don't you?

And so they slept


Francis Parkman wrote
that the howling and coughing of wolves
through the night
grew no more fearsome or even tiresome
than the constant racketing of insects
that accompanied each night
on the prairie in 1846 -
and so they slept.

Encamped for thirty years
along the Susquehanna
I sleep unafraid
through the rumbling tonnage of freight cars
and incessant whine of tires
that insinuate the patient stillness
off my front porch -
a cicada would wake me.

Perhaps I should toughen-up to the prospect
of wind turbines slashing on the hilltops,
gas derricks clacking up the creek-bed,
and doom looming as always in the darkness;
the picketed horses were never afraid
even as the slathering wolves
slinked among them -
gnawing their rawhide tethers, setting them free.


September 1, 2009