Friday, January 07, 2011

Rodney Nelson

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DRUMLIN SUMMIT



you made it up before any rain
and would not have had to moan or sigh
but you did


                     as if to whoever
inhabited the ridge you could see
way out from


                     a child made it too and
screamed a cliché to her following
not at you


                     to what would the moan or
sigh of an old hiker man have been
directed


                     maybe it was only
a note from your animal to you
of continuing operation




POET GUY IN AMERICA 


he had gotten a talking job that tied him to
rooms so tried to act it out in them
                     play the trek
                     driver the
                     screamy bitch
                     the wiiiild turkey
                                       dreaming
that somewhere a camera waited whereon he
would be limelit to the pattycake music of
pander man and win all fame and money and sex
                     while
he might have ridden on the untalkative
plains to write it out
                     a soothfast metacowboy



NO ONE’S RIVERBANK



I brought in the autumn dandelion crop
with an eye while no one’s raft of log and stick
and trashy weed came down the river


early sapient men would not have wanted
a few of anything but I had a mind
to each bent flower and its meaning


they would have swum to it and gotten the raft
idea and then gone on to piracy
and cod hunt and the garbage freighter




AWAY TO EACH OTHER

we would have to run away to
                                       Swallow’s Nest Rock
                     a man my age does
not elope
                     and translate into
German together I do not mean
live on the rock just be and look
at the hunch of it that the Snake moves
too quick to reflect
                     we would camp
on the Idaho strand downrange of
                                       Hell’s Canyon
                     in heat
                     not really
at the rock
                     I mean within its watch
we might abscond however a
man like me could do that
                     you know with
what and from what and whom
                     would have
or even may have to if the un-
rest that hit me in the late day
cannot get word to you in German
or English
                     we are animal
without one and read only the eye
                     may have to
run away from
                                       Minn-
                                       esota
                                       Dakota
                     the whom
the what you know just to get where we
can talk
                     translate from your dark eye in-
to mine into whatever at
Swallow’s Nest Rock
                     be and look at it
just run away to each other

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