POETRY
Photo by Kenton Rowe
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EARTH DAY ~ April 22, 2025
Wishing a poetic Earth Day/Week/Month/Year/Decade… to all and, in light of the following poem’s sentiments, especially to the Pueblo People of New Mexico, where the poem is set. Speaking of which, one of my other personal Heroines—alongside Mother Earth, “The Cottonwood Goddess,” and the young Zia Pueblo woman artist—is former Secretary of the Interior and current N.M. gubernatorial candidate, Deb Haaland, a 35th generation Laguna Puebloan, who approached her Cabinet position with a cultural, as well as feminine, wisdom likely far more intimate, sensitive, empathetic than most who preceded her as Interior Secretary. This poem was rendered in early draft years ago, and, for reasons beyond my understanding, never brought itself to fruition until a recent (April 2025) Santa Fe visit, when it beckoned me to listen more closely, and to convey, albeit subliminally, what it had further to say—yes, during this critically more urgent time-n-space, in which climate change is paramount among our Earthly concerns.
THE COTTONWOOD GODDESS
I met my Goddess in the very center
of San Ildefonso Pueblo. She has many arms
spread wide enough to welcome all
to the Eight-Northern Arts Fair. Her leaves sing
a Tewa wisdom you’ll catch wind of
lending a keen storyful ear to the minstrel
breeze of Kokopelli flute—fruitful songs,
their notes, the musical seeds rained down
in a fertility dance of birth and rebirth.
I believe
She caresses within Her heartwood
every sadness, every joy. Maybe
Her deepest, most intricate roots,
seeking truth, choose whose fingers
will awaken inert clay
into living pottery. I will never know
the heights, the depths, of Her soul. A mere guest
offering my mere presence
in praise of this solemn
glimpse of what’s hallowed, I pause,
head bowed, while inching my way
into the shade of this tree, into the vestibule
of this ancient cathedral.
Sensing the choir
lofts of cliff-dwelling elders, I stand
awestricken in the nave, the hazy
light of the outside world
churning with cosmic dust
after its journey through me. I gaze
upward into the dizzying fresco of thick limbs,
the taste of blue-corn piki bread,
consecrated with ash the wind lives on,
spinning me decades back
to the Communion host tasting like pottery
must taste, like friable kernels
of micaceous earth.
Meadow dew
moistens the rust-red dust on my boots
into the same tint of clay
a young Zia Pueblo girl rolled,
shaped, painted, polished,
fired into the miniature bowl
I cherish, I behold,
so often in the chalice of my palm—always
in light of the cottonwood
blossom of her smile
winged lovely as any miracle.
I met my Goddess
I believe, in the center of San Ildefonso
Pueblo, New Mexico. She has many faces. One,
I’m sure, is that of a mystical bird—another,
this child thrilled to share her first art,
her first earth, her very essence, with the whole
wide sacred world, thriving beneath this tree.
​
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Like Mother, like son—tree-huggers, a pair. Happy Mother’s Day to all Mothers, especially to the most nurturing Mom of all, Mother Earth, from all of her children, flora and fauna alike. Were it not for Mother Earth, Sunday May 14, 2023 would mark my 13th Mother’s Day as an orphan.
Otherwise, may Delia Zarzyski’s legacy live on in all “her stories,” including the following poem, which is missing one key detail. My Italian Noni, Angelina Pedri, with her daughter, my Mom, in utero, traveled to America on the steamship, Saint Paul—which makes me wonder if my namesake is as much nautical as it is biblical?
As The World Turns
Conceived in northern Italy, a mountain town,
my mother crossed the Atlantic, 1920,
in the womb, lived her first twenty-seven years
at 507 Poplar Street, married
a navy man turned iron ore miner,
moved to 505 and stayed
married to the same man on the same street,
never learned to drive,
seldom missed Sunday mass or Friday fish
fries at the V.F.W. or Legion Hall,
raised three boys—prayed, cooked, cleaned house,
washed clothes, shopped for groceries—loved
The Mitch Miller and Lawrence Welk shows,
listens still to her polka
program, Saturday morning on WJMS,
while baking biscotti, doing something useful, she
having confessed to her poet son,
on her eightieth birthday, that she’d much
rather scrub her kitchen floor than read a book
because she just can’t stand to just sit
and do nothing, except for tuning in
weekday afternoons to the everlasting soap
opera saga she’s referring to
when she says, with so much joy in her voice,
“time to watch my story,”
though, not so oddly at all,
it’s the farthest thing from it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Zeke Zarzyski (April 28, 2005 - April 25, 2019)
​
I’ve written more poems in celebration of our dog, Zeke, than I’ve written in celebration of my wife, Elizabeth, and she agrees that I have my priorities in order. Need I say more? Okay then, I will—how’s this: “palindromes” are words or phrases that read the same backward as they do forward—noon, radar, kayak, madam, evil olive…(evil olive?)—but a “semordnilap” becomes a different word when read backward—“palindromes” into “semordnilap,” the most obvious example here?
​
Better yet, if you’re familiar with the film, The Shining, how can you forget the scene of the little boy, Danny (Danny Lloyd) reciting “red rum, red rum, red rum…” while speed-peddling his tricycle up and down the colossal halls of the Overlook Hotel mountaintop lodge that his parents, Jack (Jack Nicholson) and Wendy (Shelley Duvall) are caretaking for the winter? You got it—“red rum, red rum, red rum” semordnilapping into “murder, murder, murder….”
Lest I digress further, however, dare I suggest, only somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that, “In the beginning, God created Dog?” Good! You’re grinning! As do those in need of service dogs, many provided by organizations sporting the handle “In Dog We Trust.” Which brings us to thee Grinning God, thee Grinning God’s self, who created hilariously zany Zeke, and who must have one hell of a sense of humor to have concocted, named, shaken and poured the “comedic human cocktails,” The Baxter Black, The Sarah Silverman, The Richard Pryor, The George Carlin, The Robin Williams, The Wanda Sykes, The Paul Zarzyski…?
Finally, the definitive litmus test or polygraphic quintessential question is this simple, this cut-n-dried: anyone who denies talking baby talk to their dog is a lying son-of-a-bitch.
Living Poetry
Down the echo-chamber hallway
from kitchen to my writing niche
filled with screaming
hurricanes of words
through the window screen, I catch wind
of my wife cooing, cooing
baby talk to our Aussie dog, who,
pushing the century mark,
rediscovers puppy comfort
in the long-voweled, two-syllabled
emasculation of his name
over the hard consonant
handle, Zeke, making him
feel Spike-or-Duke
unneutered pit-bull-macho
in his canine prime. “How’s sweet
little Zekey doing today? Is he hungry
for his Zekey food? Does Zekey want
to go feed horses? Play
Cookie-Down-the-Hall, go walkies,
go pee-pee poo-poo? Oooooo,
Zekey’s such a good dog.” I smile,
put my pencil down, close my notebook,
slide the window shut, the wind’s words
slamming face-first into the pane—
piling up and melting
against the house like hail
stones horizontally out of the south. I
sit back in what was once
my writing chair, relax my hands,
fingers loosely tongue-n-grooved
in my lap like an old Italian
woman praying her rosary
at High Mass. I close my eyes, listen,
hear again the osmosis of poetry
seeping into the log-walled soul
through its most organic door
opening like the cover
of a book—not one bit less a book
minus a single printed page.
For Elizabeth
Photo by Jesical Johnston ~ unsplash
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Photo by Sande DeSalles ~ Frank & Charlot Beard, Ellensburg, WA
No Easy Way To Bury A Horse
Muscle. Machine. Steel teeth digging
never deep enough to unsee
what’s seen, there’s just no easy way,
as there’s no easy way to bury
the hymnals of horse psalms
long ago sung, always a cappella, always
a-gallop on this eternal wind.
Enemy or friend,
death begets death, let us now confess
aloud from the pulpit mound of mool
this merciful earth lends us,
albeit for a steep price.
Climbing into the grave
beside the mare, Socks,
I cup from my jacket pocket
a fistful of alfalfa pellets
set inches from her lips, inches from
the echoing tremolo
memory of eager notes she’d hold and hold
at feeding time.
This final offering
sans belief in an equine-jesus-
hereafter, sans all reasoning
but for the one reason I keep
between my sentimental self and the wild
flipside of reasoning
marauding with the gothic herds
of loss.
Exhausted, tuned to the same old
muted human homily of grieving
on the Sabbath morning-after, I traipse
uphill through fresh snow to the grave
latticed with jackrabbit tracks, antelope tracks,
scripture, with the intrinsic language
of absence—with this prayer of solace
only the most primal among us
know how to pray for the living.
​
Buck
The December my horse died, I did not
go to midnight mass
to celebrate with a single sip of wine
Christ’s birth. Instead, lit
between a nimbus moon and new snow,
I guzzled mezcal and mimicked the caroling
coyotes down the crick
where weeks earlier I dragged Buck
behind the pickup—horizontal
hooves at an awkward trot
in the side mirror, an image
I’ll take with me to hell. No backhoe,
no D-8 Cat to dig a grave with, I left
him in deep bunchgrass, saffron
belly toward the south
like a warm porch light thrown
suddenly over those singing
No-el, No-el….
Riding the same ground
that past spring for horned cow skulls
to adorn our gates, I spotted four
bleached white as puffballs,
methodically stuffed them
into a never-tear bag,
balanced the booty
off one thigh and tried to hold
jog-trot Buck to a walk,
my forefinger hefting
the left rein to curb
his starboard glance.
One by one,
like spook-show aliens hatching
from human brisket, white shoots popped
through that hot black plastic
gleaming in noon sun that turned
my grasp to butterfat. And when I reached
lifting to retwist my grip,
it was sputnik flying low, it was
Satan’s own crustacean unleashed, it was the
prehistoric, eight-horned, horse-eating bug
that caught Buck’s eye
the instant his lit fuse hit powder. Lord,
how that old fat pony, living
up to his name one last time,
flashed his navel at angels,
rattled and rolled my skulls like dice,
and left me on all fours
as he did on that Christmas—high-
lonesomed, hurt, and howling
not one holy word toward the bones.
​
Photo by Chris Blair - unsplash
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Big Poetic Medicine, 2013 (revisited10 years later)
I’ve spent my past 4 birthdays, as I did my first 18, in the home I grew up in—at 505 Poplar Street, Hurley, Wisconsin. My mother and father bought the house (for $2500.00) in 1947, after Dad’s return from the war, and they lived there the remainder of their lives. After Dad died in October of 2008, Mom held forth until her passing in August, 2010. Almost 4 years later, the “empty” house remains filled with their belongings. If asked “the logic” behind this situation, I’d respond with a single word: “sentimentality.” As in, pure, 200 proof emotion—reasoning be damned. Paramount of which, monetary reasoning, because, along with taxes and insurance and upkeep expenses, it costs a small fortune to heat the place during the long Wisconsin winter, and…well...I suppose it’s the same sentimental “mind-n-heart-set” that does not allow me to endure the thought of that house without warmth. You see, Mom and Dad kept the wood furnace, “supplementing" the natural gas furnace, banked with oak and maple 20 hours a day, October through May. To the degree that I recall, later in life, having to surreptitiously open the upstairs windows during Christmas visits—40-below outside, 85-above in! For the 60+ years that Mom and Dad lived at 505, heat was as much a ritual as it was an essential, and it just so happens to be my poetic way, dammit, to cling to this ritual, or tradition, until the last stretched-to-the-max heartstring snaps.
Thusly, I’ve deemed it also a “ritual” to tend to Mom and Dad’s gravesite at the Hurley Cemetery on Memorial Day. I am determined to make the late-May “pilgrimage” for as long as the Musical Universe allows me this privilege. And since it just so happens that May 25 falls into this time slot, it appears I’ll be celebrating my birthday, for however may years to come, in the same house to which Mom and Dad, in 1951, brought home—from Newport Hospital across the river in Ironwood, Michigan—their first of three “bundles of joy.”
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
Two years ago, while rummaging through an upstairs closet at 505 Poplar, I came across a cardboard box of my baby memorabilia, including a 4-inch-thick scrapbook filled with “Congratulations!” cards from family, neighbors, and friends, 99% of whom are now long gone. And in the bottom of the box, I discovered my blue plastic infant ID bracelet, complete with the nurse’s cursive that reads “Zarzyski, Boy.” Mom was the worst at making her mind up when it came to decisions, critical or otherwise (“What kind of soup should I buy, Paul?”) and the name of her first-born was likely as critical as decisions came for her. Had I discovered this gem prior to her passing, I might have inquired, “what were your other choices?” In any case, here it is photographed, by Elizabeth, on my pinkie. And that’s Mom's last tablecloth upon which my writing notebook lies open. And the pencil, embossed with the title to my poem, “Words Growing Wild In The Woods,” (about fishing as a young child with Dad) is a keepsake of a community poetry residency I did in Hurley years ago to celebrate the heritage of the Iron Range.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko
Photo by Sue Rosoff
“A poet’s autobiography is his poetry.
Anything else can only be a footnote.”
Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko
​​
In January 1995, the distinguished Russian poet, Yevgeny Alexandrovich Yevtushenko honored us with his spirited, yet humble, presence at the eleventh annual National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada, thanks in large part to a dear friend of the Gathering, poet-critic Scott Preston, who extended the invitation to Mr. Yevtushenko. My best recollection is that few of us knew much, if anything at all, about the Russian writer’s work or life. It was our way, however, to delve into his poetry the instant we caught wind that he’d be joining us, and the admiration for his sensibilities was instantaneous; dare I quip that we rolled out the “red” carpet of western hospitality for this literary figure as we had never done before? I only wish I could relay here the many personal recollections of those who also shared the stages, as well as attended the behind-the-scenes jam sessions, private corner-table saloon conversations, and, yes, even a wedding ceremony, with Yevgeny as celebrity witness and Russian-proverb messenger. Moreover, I wish I could relay the responses of those hundreds in the audiences, who sat in musical awe of his words delivered with fervor in both English and Russian—especially “our” western women (and certain western men?), who swooned over the tall, lithe beautiful poet-god with his Cossack charisma and charm. What I wish most, however, is that I had a $5.00 poker chip for each captivated (and capsized) woman I witnessed peering into the deep alluring pools of Yevtushenko’s eyes. To this day I still grin when I think about all those tough cowboys kissing good-bye for good the wife or girlfriend, who they thought they knew inside and out, never again being quite the same gal with whom they arrived in Elko!
Photo by Sue Rosoff
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Memorial Birthday
George Floyd’s murder transformed my May 25, 2020 birthday into a
“deathday.” A similar pall darkened this year's “observance" the day
after the Uvalde, Texas School Massacre. Further affecting my 71st
was a poignant MSNBC interview with Scarlett Lewis, the mother of
Sandy Hook murder victim, Jesse Lewis—he, “Jesse Lewis, 6," being
the very first entry on the Wall Street Journal December 17, 2012 full
pictorial page memorial kept in view here near my writing desk and
referenced in the title of the poem “Ars Poetica Kevlar….”
Beneath Jesse's photograph, the prematurely brief biographical note
includes, “Jesse liked to think up far-fetched scenarios, asking What
if…, before spinning a hypothetical tale.”
​
The following poem, echoing Jesse’s storytelling fancy, "spins a
hypothetical tale, a far-fetched scenario, asking what if?”
Ars Poetica Kevlar—The APK-26 Bullet-Proof Poem:
Upon Carrying “For Life” the Wall Street Journal
Sandy Hook Mass Shooting Pictorial Page, “Shattered Lives”
What worth are the poet’s words
scribed upon thoughts-and-prayers gauze—
cotton, bamboo, hemp, jute—mere pulp
too soaked to clot and stanch
the temple’s stained glass
platelets shattered, spilling at the whims
of invincible ballistics?
What long-shot odds
mere body-and-blood still face
in the wakes of AK-47, of AR-15,
unabbreviated bursts, if not for this quixotic
willingness to will our A-to-Z-
26-letter alphabet, head-to-toe,
impenetrable—the poem’s thin syllables,
sinewy filaments, microscopic fibrils
polymerized, twisted, woven, knit,
clenched tighter than a million fists
spun from the spinneret page?
Part myth,
part wizardry, scripture, sci-fi… why not
sanctify as supernatural
this futuristic cure to the cancer
of lead—metastasized,
horizontal onslaughts of lead
flatlining we-the-faithful
joy-riding the salvation train
we-the-faithful board day after day
for safe passage?
Why bother otherwise
synthesizing our choirs of lines
if not to believe this alchemized song
stronger than the speed of evil,
if not to believe its chemistry
flexed, its tensile-strength-to-weight
ratio, its so-called “tenacity”
fifty-five times that of steel?
In other words,
let us now fill our pages with these
inked second skins, these full-body-tattoos,
these sheer, armored leotards,
sheathing us from our own
prosaic law, from decades of bullet-
riddled dirges, patriotic requiems,
sentimental anthems. Let our musical
poetic suits of chain mail DNA,
of molecular bugle calls, of maternal
psalms deliver us from all
future, present, past
tragic headline news amended here
for good: “Ricocheted Lead
Returned to Senders—No Victims
Smiling Childishly Below.”
Jessie Lewis
Photo by: Scarlett Lewis
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(Beluga Photo by Anton Bryksin)
How the Beluga Spoons
For a whispered secret or to steal a kiss, I lean out
over her tank, like a longship’s figurehead,
far as a man in love dare reach
without altogether letting go. My fingers grip the rail
behind me, arms contorted to flippers. Rippling
in this aquamarine mirror, a human face
becomes the face of a whale
nosing cautiously through
the surface, that crystalline plane
between two worlds. I smile, her lips opening
into her eye-to-eye cavern. I throw a kiss, toss it
gently with a nod. She dips her lower jaw,
scoops it full as a waterwheel bucket,
and with a gesture, rightly larger,
wetter, more deliberate than mine,
approves our courtship. She chortles
my comic response, my straight-man nonchalance,
ladles another mandible full, and showers me
again with kisses. By this passage, we vow
to the cosmos a romance revived
from eons of dormancy. We feel our way,
sonar and sight, slowly into the gray swales—lovers sounding our one laughter
wave after wave, quasar to quasar,
toward that first rollicking spark and whatever
leviathan god brought it on.
Recoded on COLLISIONS OF RECKLESS LOVE, Open Path Music, 2005
​
Printed version of poem:
WOLF TRACKS ON THE WELCOME MAT
OreanaBooks, 2003
​
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
THE WHALE IN MY WALLET
​
My Polish and Italian grandparents entered this country through Ellis Island. Little could they have foreseen that one day their grandchild, Paul, would adopt a leviathan son named Stub. If this isn’t Stub, his humpback self, then perhaps it’s one of his numerous offspring who the Statue of Liberty seems to be welcoming as She did “our" ancestors in the early twentieth century. Whether Stub or someone from his lineage, all I can say is "DAT-SA-MA-BOY!"
Photo by: Reuters@Reuters
​
​
Recoded on STEERING WITH MY KNEES
Bucking Horse Moon Music, 2016
​
Printed version of poem:
STEERING WITH MY KNEES
Bangtail Press, 2014
​
Recorded on WORDS GROWING WILD
JRP RECORDS, 1988
​
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
MY LIFETIME OF WAR
I was born, May 25, 1951, during the Korean War. My generation’s first war, however, was Viet Nam. As a student at Hurley High in 1969, I bought into our civics teacher’s fervent proclamations of the Viet Nam War being a “just war,”—oxymoronically akin, I learned later, to “Holy War” or “last war.” My reactionary viewpoint, thanks to the virtue of wisdom, shifted drastically upon coming face-to-horrific-face with a June 1972 magazine cover photo of the naked, screaming nine-year-old Vietnamese girl, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, running directly toward the camera lens after a napalm attack. That single photograph defined everything I would ever need to know, going forth, about war.
On January 17, 1991, I watched, from a remote Montana ranch- house, live television coverage of Operation Desert Storm, which began our full-bore combat phase of The Gulf War. It was late in the afternoon, and as perplexing, yet captivating, as were the images, I had to pry myself away from the tube to do chores before dark. I still recall today how I’d interrogatively contemplated—just as I had interrogatively contemplated 20 years earlier in 1971—how this war, most certainly, just had to be, once and for all, the last war of my lifetime of war?
I remember also—while feeding my family of 4-leggeds, as well as any additional kindred heartbeats I’d nurtured in the gloaming of that cold, blustery moment—how I’d been transfixed by the bright blue Minuteman Missile silo security lights a mere mile to the east.
Perhaps I came to understand, and maybe even to accept back then, on “The Day The War Began,” as I do today, with our country on the brink of “The Iran War,” how our fellow, soulful, nonhuman plant and animal beings, to whom I continue my caregiving, afford us our solitary, final, sorrowful glimpse of Peace On Earth.
Paul Zarzyski—January 4, 2019
​
CD: Collisions of Reckless Love
Produced by Open Path Music, 2006
(Gordon Stevens, Tim Volpicella, Lee Ray, Scott Sorkin—Producers)
Denny Berthiaume, Piano
Gordon Stevens, Acoustic Bass
​
Printed versions of poem:
I Am Not A Cowboy—Dry Crik Press, 1995
Wolf Tracks On The Welcome Mat—Oreana Books, 2003
​
Photo Credit:
cplani : Blue Light in Night Sky
NO WAY TO FEEL ALL ALONE WAY OUT WEST
“And it’s not a cry you can hear at night
Not somebody who’s seen the light
It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah.”
Leonard Cohen
Wolves up high are howling Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”
In the wilds of the mind, what better metaphor
A great horned owl hooting, hooting her approval
Aspen leaves, like hi-hats, clicking rhythm to the score.
Buzz-tails in the tall grass rattling their warnings
A polecat left his scent last night while passing through
Prairie dogs tell everyone in town their sad, sad story
Reminders in the wind that others live here, too.
(Chorus) There’s no way to feel all alone way out west
Surrounded by hearts harmonizing with ours
No way to judge whose voices sing best
Whose souls shine the brightest from a land lit with stars.
Wolverine and grizzly bear, cougar, lynx and fox!
The hottest licks in Francis of Assisi’s Cool-Cat Band”
Bebop Jazz! Reggae! Blues! Hip-Hop! It all Rocks!
Blessed are those with front-row seats in the Wild West grandstand.
Honey bees to chickadees, meadowlarks to condors
Barn swallows, bats, and nighthawks in acrobatic spins
So many maestro species, so many songs and songsters
Mother osprey fishing to feed her hungry twins.
(Bridge) All for one, one for all
Fellow travelers, sisters, brothers
Our kindred-spirit symphony
Among infinities of others.
(Chorus) There’s no way to feel all alone way out west
Surrounded by hearts harmonizing with ours
No way to judge whose voices sing best
Whose souls shine the brightest from a land lit with stars.
Wolves up high are howling Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”
For love and loss, a mournful is a hopeful metaphor
Aurora borealis shoots its cupid notes right through us
Big Mama Earth on lead guitar playing every “secret chord.”
Wolves up high are howling Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Photo by zef art
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PZ Dictum. #190. The Poetic worth of Literary Earth diminishes with each and every extinction, the definitive truthful irony being that the ultimate extinction of the Poet’s own species is no less, or more, critical in this equation of loss.
Photo by: David Billings
In acknowledgment of Earth Day, 2021, I offer the following Self-Interview except from 51:30 Poems, 20 Lyrics, 1 Self-Interview as a preamble to a recently written song lyric, titled "Western Questions":
…You do write quite a bit out of grief, as did Hugo. And then there’s anger—your poem “The Hand,” for example. Care to address what seems for you rare, yet extremely effective, poetic catalysts? Grief? Anger? Or, if you prefer, ire?
“Ire” smacks of euphemism. “The Hand” was written out of 200 proof fury—undiluted rage. I was holed up in that old ranch house on Flat Creek south of Augusta, in the foothills below the Rocky Mountain Front. Middle of winter. Late 1980s. Numerically in sync with the wind-chill temps dipping to eighty-something below zero one night. I was all but hugging the wood stove. Had propane as a backup, but in that open country pounded by severe winds, power outages (which would render the propane heaters worthless) were common. My mission, therefore, was to sleep on the couch in the main room with one ear open and to keep the fire banked, as well as the television tuned in to the latest news and weather updates. I might’ve been watching Nightline or some other late-night news magazine show—I don’t remember for sure. They aired a segment on apartheid, complete with a camera crew on location somewhere in South Africa. What I witnessed—set thousands of miles away in an arid landscape almost two hundred degrees warmer than the climate just outside my window—offended and infuriated me. Despite my physical and emotional distance—my immediate anxiety over the blizzard conditions—I considered the contents of the TV segment as a personal assault on my world. Which is precisely the point, you understand—as long as I’m drawing breaths on this planet, it is my world, my home, and bigotry, racism, in my home, aboard my orb, both saddens and angers me to no end. The local station interrupted the programming with a “severe weather warning,” which, as I recall, included the information that propane at such-‘n’-such a frigid temperature will jell, not allowing it to vaporize, “the end.” Insulating the regulator on the tank was highly advisable. Ripley Hugo had given me Dick’s immense, heavy, hooded fishing parka after he died, beneath which I could sheathe myself in layer after layer of cotton, wool, silk, goose down, polyurethane, you name it. Thus bundled, I not so much walked as “plodded like an astronaut or deep sea diver,” is how I phrased it in a poem titled, “Feeding Horses In Richard Hugo’s Fishing Parka.”
​
The thousand gallon propane “pig” was set a mere twenty paces from the back door. I wrapped and lashed with baling twine an old sougan (cowboy’s heavy, patched blanket) around the regulator. I’d just eaten my ritual, before-bed bowl of Wheaties while barely fending off the guilt of possibly shorting the horses on their Arctic ration of alfalfa, so it didn’t take much self-convincing, as long as I was hazarding the storm, to prod me toward the barn to pour Cody and Buck their late-night Wheaties flakes as well. Halfway there I turned my back to the wind, noted the flicker of light ever-so-slightly visible from the kitchen window, and became mesmerized by the swirling snow quickly filling in my tracks. “I stood there amazed,” to borrow a phrase from the “Home on the Range” lyric, until the only tracks remaining were the ones I was standing in. Never before, or since, have I felt so connected to this earth, felt so aware of each breath, of the exchange of carbon dioxide for oxygen in the lung’s microscopic capillaries. Never have I felt so alive, as well as felt the significance of being so alive. I believe I also experienced for a nano-moment a heightened degree of tranquility in which I could have happily taken my last breath, although I could not have exercised that option even if I chose to because of my need to get back to the house and engage the poem I knew would confront me. Had I not just been accosted by the apartheid footage, I probably would have heated and hammered that minus-eighty wind-chill factor moment into something ornate, joyous, at the poetry forge. (Someday, I’m certain, I will write that poem.)…
​
Minus the “joyous” prediction 30 years ago:
​
WESTERN QUESTIONS
Bound for the horse barn, the cowboy goes blind
In a wicked-night blizzard, 80 below—
Mankind looking back at our long-ago light
Now barely a-flicker from his kitchen window.
Are we all plodding-on toward some faithful oasis
While talking in tongues and dying of thirst?
Is this all a mirage, or an unanswered prayer?
It just might be both, for better or worse.
Out in the desert, the arctic, the cosmos
Molecule, atom, and Big Bang dust—
Are we of the heavens we of the weather?
Are we sacred or sinful—boom or we bust?
​
The cowboy peers back at his tracks nevermore
Out of the black, does our past become future?
Stunned by what was, we fall madly in love
With life in which death is our consummate suitor.
​
Is temperature linear or is it a circle?
The earth at its coldest spinning toward hot?
Hurricane, fire, flooding and drought,
Do we learn what-is-what to learn what-is-not?
Out in the desert, the arctic, the cosmos
Molecule, atom, and Big Bang dust—
Are we of the heavens we of the weather?
Are we sacred or sinful—if we boom, must we bust?
​
The cowboy peers back at his tracks nevermore
Out of the black, does our past become future?
Stunned by what was, we fall madly in love
With life in which death is our consummate suitor.
Is temperature linear or is it a circle?
The earth at its coldest spinning toward hot?
Hurricane, fire, flooding and drought,
Do we learn what-is-what to learn what-is-not?
Out in the desert, the arctic, the cosmos
Molecule, atom, and Big Bang dust—
Are we of the heavens we of the weather?
Are we sacred or sinful—if we boom, must we bust?
​
Astronaut cowboy in chaps and big hat,
Wild-West tamed by ol’ climate change—
Adrift, all alone, no horse and no home
At Castaway Ranch on the dark cosmic range.
Will one nickering horse wake us in time?
Will we turn to embrace our one saving grace?
Is the earth reaching out for one hope in this storm?
For the truth that will force us to face what we face?
Out in the desert, the arctic, the cosmos
Molecule, atom, and Big Bang dust—
Are we of the heavens we of the weather?
Are we sacred or sinful—if we boom must we bust?
Are we of the heavens we of the weather?
Are we sacred or sinful, if we shine must we rust?
…if we shine, must we rust?
…if we shine, must we rust?
PZ Dictum. #42. Not one single human being will be remembered after death in the ultimate wake of the Universe mourning the passing of Its dearly beloved Planet Earth.
Photo by: Joseph Driscoll
Recoded on Collisions of Reckless Love
Produced by Open Path Music, 2006
(Gordon Stevens, Tim Volpicella, Lee Ray, Scott Sorkin—Producers)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Photo by Ben Hines, 2019—Parker Curry in awe of
Michelle Obama portrait.
Fairy Tale
First, pity the astrophysicist, adrift
billions of light years away
from observatory earth—yearning
to explicate the deep
hidden meaning of the heavens’ epic,
feeling his illiterate way
through the cryptic black-on-black script
of dark matter ciphers.
Back to terra firma,
now picture the little African-
American girl in pigtails, cotton
floral-print dress and bobby socks. Say it’s cherry
blossom season in DC. She is
learning to read and to write, she
is loving her history lessons
in school, she is having fun on Easter
vacation in our nation’s capitol
where she stares up in awe—her dark eyes,
uncharted stars—at the white marble
statue of President Lincoln, at the colossal
alphabet letters of his
Gettysburg Address. In phonics
she has learned to enunciate
each word—ALL MEN ARE CRE-
A-TED E-QUAL.
The little girl thinks about
her blind friend back home. Older,
she might correlate the enormous
letters carved in stone
to a gargantuan braille that should touch
even the blindest-hearted. She does not know yet
how polemics, mixed with politics and civil war,
freed her great-great-grandparents. She’s enchanted
with the giant white man in his giant white chair
gazing down upon her as she now gazes
at the new copper penny sinking slow
to the bottom of the Reflecting Pool,
heads up, as she’d hoped
it would rest, the face of Mr. Lincoln
radiant in the middle of her
calm reflection.
She recites
“Star Light, Star Bright
First Star I see tonight…”
articulating each syllable with a wish
she’ll keep secret—something about the blind,
about letters she’s learning to shape
across the page, about darkness
holding hands, at play, with light
to make all good
words in this whole wide world
once upon a time
simply shine.
​
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Zarzyski Dictum #142. The Poet can go too long without swallowing the gusano at the bottom of a good bottle of Mezcal and talking with God. (Or, if not God, then why not Mister Mink?)
For those of you who might wonder how Paul spends the long cold dreary Montana winter nights 35 years or so after “The Make-Up Of Ice” wild-assed sled rides, he drinks with Mister Mink while perusing their photo album of times-and-climes much balmier. You bet—no matter the season, Paul and his mustelid laddie confidant companion stay cozy, thanks to top-shelf tonsil varnish, as well as to the thicker winter coats they both grow. Here’s hoping you'll join them in their pursuit of inner warmth—the only way you’ll ever decode the DHM (Deep Hidden Meaning) of this poem!
