Joe's Place

It’s best to get there early

otherwise

he gets ambitious,

he makes big plans;

taking out this aspen and that becomes

cutting a swath out, filling it with rock art, building a barn.

It’s no good telling him about keeping a few

dead trees around for the flickers and bluebirds

and whatnot.

He sees trees differently than I do;

dead limbs bother him, dying tops,

groves that don’t thin out and let a few

of the biggest ones thrive.

It’s no good, that discussion,

so I pull out the saw and cut down what he points to,

laddering up to swing at the dead

lower parts of big ponderosa

bucking up aspen into

little cubes for smoking meat on the grill.

Days like that, in late September

start out in wool hats and shirts;

by the afternoon it’s a tee shirt covered

in pine pitch, sweat, bar oil.

We throw the small limbs into a bonfire pile,

open beers and sit in the sun

on the deck.

And its nice there

talking about abstractions

looking out over the trees

squeezing lime in beer

eating beef jerky.

This poem has no

point to make about such days,

or any opinion on what they might mean.

I’m just saying that its good to work the muscles

as the day turns

from cold to hot

and back again

then drive home taking in the new snow on the

mountains.