Working like a dog
Since Ive been meaning to go home
And my good woman
Who I left there
Has the patience of a Queen.
Every day the sweat leaves me
Too tired to go on,
But sun again rises high
Sending me off into the fields.
I smile out there
To the whole expanse,
Thinking how I have been so lucky
To wake beside a beautiful
Human who cares for me,
And then to work amongst the birds
Who sing so playfully
To wish me luck upon my way
Another beautiful day.
Tag: woman
Old Hound (day 3007)
There’s an old hound been hollerin’
Just outside my back door
Don’t got nothin’ for it
For I just ate my last meal
Cooked my beans on an open fire
That keeps sufferin’ to keep me warm.
Mighty hard to keep me warm
If I had more sense about me
I’d have opened up my back door
All I need is a little lovin’
A woman that keeps me warm
If I’d opened up my back door
But now it keeps gettin’ colder
So I’ll be movin’ on.
Woman (day 2971)
I don’t know how to tell you
That I see stars inside your eyes.
Every time I watch those stars
A galaxy opens up for me
That spins and whirls
And ignites with life;
Burning orbs in orbit.
And in those eyes
I’m met with joy
Such that astounds my every moment
Like a little cat jumping around
Playing amidst daylight’s echo.
I’ve searched for words
And folded my letters
To find the galaxy I sought to describe,
But in doing so
I’ve learned so well
That no mortal man
Can articulate
What woman holds in her hand.
Madly In Love (day 2897)
I am madly in love with you
I forget what I’ve said
Because every day
Is a new devotion
To the woman you are
The woman you have always been
The woman you hide behind
The woman who scares you.
I wake up each morning
Whispering your name to the Gods
They call back to me
With gentle touches on my lips
And in those moments
Visions of our past
Float to my tongue
And the depths that you penetrate me
Take me sweetly, evenly
Softly towards a new day
That reminds me
Of the gentle harmony
I find myself in
When I watch the happiness spread
Upon your lips in front of me.
Two (day 2568)
Drove into a rainstorm with two passengers to my right
Had a conversation about two things on my mind
Two stop lights later I heard two loud sounds I knew
Two old friends of mine I hadnt seen for two whole years
Two hours later I had two beers in my hand
Two more for my two friends,
Two more for the road
At last I saw the two lights I knew as my own home
Two horses there greeted me, standing next to two pine trees
That’s when I was startled by two owls calling out
One from the East, the other from somewhere North
Two steps into my door, I met my two dogs who
Grabbed my two hands and made me feel at home
Where I sat at one of my two chairs
And shared dinner for two with the woman who I do care.
Todo (day 2519)
Counting out dollars of an unmarked womans purse
She told me I had nice hair, I said she was rather curt
That is when she told me about her dear old fathers luck
That had run its course as a scholar written from a pen of steel
I was young, she was pretty, we had fun and then we both remained
Dear friends just all the same.
When the water boiled I poured the tea for three
She hadn’t come alone but we seemed to be private
I wrinkled up my nose to an unexpected story
That had me rather wondering when I would ever read his book
So we took just a minute to choose what herbs would do
And we sipped, then we stirred, and sighed until we finished
All the deeds left to do in a scholarly mans todo.
Mail (day 2467)
Letter’s in the mail to a woman I’ve never met
Confessed it all in one fifteen letter script
Could this have just been a trick?
Sloppy like the moon on a dreary midnight
A newly appointed butler hanging upon my every word
Carried it too far for I’m an ant within the bathroom
Headphones on a slow bus lost in darkness
Two beats I keep tapping on the wooden sided seat
I’m still working on a better wrong
And tomorrow I’m going to have a word with the mailroom.
Forgotten (day 2284)
How does one continue to live
In a place that’s forgotten your touch
In a world where unfamiliar hearts
Enslave a name that’s no longer known.
How does one let go
Of a T-shirt you used to wear
Of hair bands you’ve left behind
And a smell that used to be present.
At the grocer yesterday
An unknown woman walked by
With a forgotten fragrance
Who smiled as she picked up
A package of frozen peas.
Yet wounds are still swelling
Bruises still glow with a cold feeling
That a forgotten fabric
Has been set aside from imagination
And two long lines separate the distance
Of once was and what’s now.
Moon at Midnight – Part XXXXXXI (day 2035)
Every day we could feel the weather warming up
But we could also feel our spirits rising
Spring came early
We felt heaviness of Winter
Seep out of our teepee
With every cleansing steam inside
And Willow would burn sage brush
Helping evil spirits escape.
I looked for every way to show Willow
Love that I had for her
And so did Lily
I think it was a team effort
We kind of all knew that nothing ever was the same
But we still wanted Willow back
And she came back to us
After a bit of a spell away,
For a few days she left
With warm blanket and clothes
To where we didn’t really need to know
But when she returned
She was a new woman
A proud woman, an invigorated woman
A hungry woman,
And we all still loved her
And ate to celebrate the change.
She told me one night
Soon after that
That she had a vision
From her mother
Telling her that:
As the sky must cry
To empty it’s weight
So too must the heart.
It shocked me a little bit
To learn that Willow felt unworthy
Of the love that I gave her
For what had happened
To our baby
But I reassured her it wasn’t so
That no matter what
I loved her
And with this
She looked me in the eyes for a long time
And finally exclaimed:
My Love, Big Arrow –
A name she had started to affectionately
Call me after she learned
Of Lily’s and mine’s first meeting
So many moons ago now
When she had given me her little arrow
And I to her: my heart –
I don’t know where you came from
And I do hope you stay a while
You are a good man
Better then most
Your kindness I could never match
And for that, I am yours,
Until the moon stops to shine
And the Sun falls asleep.
Moon at Midnight – Part XXXXVI (day 2020)
During this time of the cold season
I became well acquainted with the myths and legends
Of the Blackfoot
One of my favourite
Was always of the Old Man, Or Na-pe,
He was a common figure in all of the legends
As the first human alive.
One day, he was sitting by his fire
And thinking to himself that he was lonely
He was restless and lonely
He looked around and tried to console himself
With the things that he had
He had a good stick to be poking the fire with
He had a good teepee to be living in
That needed no repair
He had more then enough furs around him
And he had a big buffalo just killed
To feed him for a good long time
He had almost everything he could want,
Why was he restless and lonely?
His only companion, A-pe’si the Coyote
Was very nice to have around
But right now
Was off scheming on his own
He was nice to have around
But always with his schemes
That just didn’t make sense to Old Man.
Old Man packed his pipe and lit it
And then paced around the fire for some time
Thinking: “It would be nice to have somebody to smoke with
Somebody to talk to
Somebody like me,”
And went back to smoking his pipe
“Why not!? I’m the Old Man
I can do anything I want!”
So, Old Man set about his own scheming
First he gathered lots of clay around
Then he started feeling his whole body over
Taking very careful note of each bone in his body
How it felt, how it was shaped
How many of them were in his body
And meticulously went to work
Forming each bone he had in his body with the clay
Once these were all done
He put them into the fire to harden
After he let them sit in the fire long enough
He carefully pulled them out
One by one.
Now Old Man sat with two piles of bones in front of him
One of the piles was all the perfect bones
That had come out of the fire as he had designed them
But the other pile was filled with all of the broken ones
That had split or bent inside of the fire
With the perfect bones
He began to tie the bones into their proper place
Mimicking his own body
He tied the bones together with Buffalo sinew
And he then smoothed them with Buffalo fat
On top of this he then padded some clay mixed with Buffalo blood
And then stretched over the entire frame
Buffalo skin taken from the inside of the Buffalo.
With his mannequin in front of him
He smiled: “Not perfect, but it’s pretty good,”
Poking a bit at some of the crooked pieces
Perhaps he could have thinned it out here
Or tied it a little better with sinew there
So he picked up the man he had made
Blew smoke into his eyes, nose, and mouth
And he came to life
The Old Man asked him if he’d like to sit by the fire
Where he puffed some more on his pipe
And then passed the pipe to the man and said:
“I will make some more,”
And went to collect some more clay
To make some more men.
All day long Old Man worked
Forming more bones from clay
Putting them into the fire
Carefully taking each bone out of the fire
And tying them together with Buffalo sinew
Patting on Buffalo fat to smooth them out
Then a layer of Buffalo blood mixed with clay
And finally stretching Buffalo skin over the entire frame
He sat every one of them down by the fire
And blew smoke into their eyes, nose, and mouths
And left a very big pile of broken bones
Beside the fire.
So now Old Man had some company
Men to hunt with, to sit and smoke his pipe with
To talk with, and they all lived
In his teepee and another teepee he had built
He enjoyed the new life so much
That he began to get lazy
And never threw the broken bones into the river
Like he had intended to do
Every time anybody came or went to the fire
They had to pass by the big pile of broken bones
And this became quite a nuisance to them
They would trip over them frequently
Causing the pile to fall over
Which then had to be picked up and placed neatly again
Each night the wind blew through them
Making the most dreadful of noises.
By this time A-pe’si the Coyote had returned
And he walked around
Inspecting everything that had been done
While he was gone doing whatever it was he was doing,
He didn’t much like the men
And stuck his nose up at them
Saying to Old Man:
“Your handiwork has a little bit to be desired,”
But Old Man knew A-pe’si and just laughed.
A-pe’si also pointed out the pile of bones
“Surely you could do something with the pile of bones here
Why don’t you make another man?”
“Alright alright, I will make more men,”
So Old Man and A-pe’si went to work
Clicking and rattling the bones
As they tried to piece them together
Then tying them all together with sinew
And using Buffalo fat to smooth them over
Adding clay mixed with Buffalo blood on top
Then stretching skin from inside of a Buffalo over it
When Old Man had started
He knew only of man to make and that’s what he was doing
But at every moment he did something
A-pe’si would come and change it a little bit
And so back and forth they went
Until it was done
And they both stepped back
Looking at what they had created
Old Man lit his pipe and thought
It wasn’t what he had created before and was skeptical
Yet Old Man still blew smoke into its eyes, nose, and mouth
And the woman came to life.
A-pe’si and Old Man worked all day
Tying together the rest of the broken bones
With sinew from the Buffalo
And covering it with Buffalo fat to smooth it out
Then molding it together with clay mixed with Buffalo blood
And finally stretching over all of the bones
Skin from the inside of a Buffalo
And after they finished each one
Old Man would blow smoke into its eyes, nose, and mouth
And each woman would come to life.
When all of the bones were tied together
And made into women
Old Man said: “When I made the men
I set them all by the fire”
But as Old Man and A-pe’si walked over to the fire
The women all began to talk amongst each other
A-pe’si smiled and was very pleased with what he had done
And Old Man shrugged his shoulders and lit his pipe
And sat down at the fire and began to smoke it.
So it is known
That even to this day
If you have a fire around
The men will all prefer to sit by the fire
And smoke their pipes
And the women will all gather together
And talk with themselves
To this day it is not known
Whether this is because of how the bones
Clicked and rattled
Pieced together from broken ones
Or because A-pe’si,
Who is a noisy animal by nature,
Had a part in their making.