Richard Denner

Dedicated to the horses and cows in my life.

SINGING TO THE COWS

When I see the moon rising
I think of a cow I saw in Arkansas,
and I feel sad.

When I think of the years passing
and worry about my knees blowing out
I only need to see your cow eyes
and I'm rejuvenated.

I think of you every day
sweet heifer on the ferryboat
between Sebastopol and Bucyrus.

Looking through an old yearbook
I see your bovine face
and remember you on roller skates
at Mel's Drive-In.

NEW FEATURES

Counter culture cowboys herding doggies
to Jefferson Starship. Bleeding shorthorns
and Ayurvedic medicine.

The Taittiriya Upanishad sustains me.
I am that food which eats the eater of food.

Utilizing the Cosmic Cube
The Beatific Buckaroo bores to the root
to thrall you with the cutting edge of irony.

It is announced that my name is selected
as a prizewinner in the d-Con sweepstakes,
a brand of chemical defoliants, and my prize
is a sweatshirt imprinted with d-Con.
It'll fit on the scarecrow just fine.

VARIABLES OF EXISTING CHOICES

Shorty is now in Glen's feedlot.
What if I stuck him in a hotbox,
a square of electrified wire fence?

Turn on the juice so this steer understands
the concept of fence.
You may call it a concentration camp,

but I call it home.

CATTLE ARE JUST AN EXCUSE
FOR SHOOTING COYOTES

Lest decomposing acids or infectious
pests affect your stock and feed
take heed.

Here's hoping we are blessed
with bountiful crops
and all our calves drop well.

It's midwinter spring.
I notice rhythmic modulations,
the last leaves on the cottonwoods

and birds turning and turning in the air.

CANIS LATRANS

Coyotes run with the herd.
Cows pay no attention.
I take a bead on one,
and Trickster says, "Caio, Dude!"
and weaves through my sights.

OM OM ON THE RANGE

I received a pamphlet advertising
an artificial vagina, a liquid semen
refrigerator, and a trans-jector
electronic ejaculator.

You wear it, you keep it.

WIND

The wind is cousin to the night.
It gyres the hawk's flight.
Color it glacier blue.

A corridor for gale winds,
sylvan meadow whispers,
and playful darting zephyrs.

The next valley draws off the warm air.
The wind doesn't blow in Kittitas.
Yakima sucks.

CRITICS AREN'T AGREED

upon meaninglessness. Knowing
the tack helps in taming a maverick.
It's some struggle, how to place
the what where. A running W
will put a horse on its knees.

RIGHT LIVELIHOOD

At first we were cowhunters.
Texas in the 1830's. We were called
cowboys because of our youth.
Cowpokes poked cows to their feet
through the slats of the cattlecars.
A cow to a cowboy is anything
he can drive.

NOTES ON THE BACK OF A FEEDBILL

FIRST INSCRIPTION: "Take that statue,
i.e. Hammarabi Code
I. Qualification
A. Ontology
1. ( )
...O. it's base Overpowering
...6.023 times10 to the 23rd
II.
A. Whitespace
1. Points to that which transpired"
...a broken odelisk

WASHINGTON SWINE SEMINAR

I write this from the Holiday Inn
where I attend the Western Washington
Swine Seminar. African Swine Fever is
an expanding threat to American hogs.
Note depreciation and shrinkage.

Between the ten year farm inventory
and depreciation allowance bit and
irrigation system design capacity functions
there's a bluesy sax thing with moog rhythm
on the Musak.

DUKE'S MIX IN WINTER

One cow rubs her ass on the feeder,
one hits the dust bag, one butts an intruder.

Two magpies pick at frozen grain,
then walk like fat Z's
towards the squeeze chute.

Fog filters the light,
sagebrush just visible over the hogpen.

Don't fret, it's a cow's life.
There's a growing cavie in your womb
singing for another bale of first cut hay.

A Surefire Heater in the water trough.
Dry snow caps each fence post.

LIVING WELL

October Family Circle special issue
contains Mrs. Earl L. Butz's
Russian Noodle Casserole.

Says Earl, "When my wife wants to be
thrifty, we have casserole dishes.
They are very nutritious and very tasty,
and I enjoy them. Anyway,
I've spent my whole life always eating
what was put before me."

EVOLVED AND ECLIPSED

I took my pigs for a walk
two gelds and a young boar.
Kicking and barking
we frolicked in the fields.

The moon arose.
The moon descended.
The bear and the hunter,
the warrior, the lovers.

CALF GRAFT

Count the stock. And again,
still one heifer missing.

Down by the west fence line
four legs stick out of a catch ditch.
Eyes rolled back, nose bleeding,
my presence adding to her fear,
"Lay back, Cowslip, relax."

More than I'd rope and tie,
I wrestle her to her feet.
Moaning, she makes for the feed.
She'll be all right if she can walk and eat.

Later, I tell my irrigating buddy,
and he guesses I was some kind of lucky.
I see a hide hanging on his fence and
asked if he had lost one, he replies

"Just born and coughed up its guts.
Skinned it out and bought a new calf
off a cow with a blown udder.

Put this new calf in the dressed skin.
Cow finally took it for her own, after
I sprayed deodorant up her nose.

This morning I smell something dead,
that skin rotting from the calf's heat."

NOW IS LIKE THAT

Driving along 4th Parallel Road, I see
an Angus cow with placenta attached
and dangling umbilical cord, licking
the sack off her calf's face.

The calf staggers and falls, and his mom
nudges him up and goes back grazing.
Like lightning the calf finds the tit.
My first birth of the season.

Around the calf there's a beige halo.
Or maybe it's just the light.

GREEN PASTURES

I push water.
I keep the cow pies out of the corrugation.
I spread it out, run it uphill if I can.

There's an art to irrigation,
and the cows eat the grass,
and when they're done
they move to greener pastures.

Then, the delicing, tagging, dehorning,
shots, shine and a shave.

LANDSCAPE WITH LIVESTOCK

Tyger, a house cat, in a still life pose,
as Witch, a barn cat, wends through
amaranth and lambs quarter unaware
-too late-it's flying fur and blurs.

Chitadeck and Oveltine look on.
"Shit is sure a funny name for a horse,"
says my son. Chit is gentle, but
Ovy'll twist like a snake in hot water.

The hills above the pump canal
are irrigated with long green shadows.
"Why are those cows standing so still?"
"Those aren't cows; they're bales of hay."

WATER UNDER THE FOOTBRIDGE,
ICE OVER THE FENCERAIL

Snow contoured in rococo shapes.
Snow blowing up out of the ground.
Cows with icicles hanging off their noses
doing all they can just to stay standing.

Standing in a row, and when one
has had enough of the wind's edge
she huddles into the herd
letting the next one take her turn.

Later, the moon is beneath Orion.
He's become a retiring sort of chap.
She's more voluptuous than ever,
astronauts in her mustache.

UNTIL THE COWS COME HOME

Toward the satisfaction of constructing
a stunning stanza of meticulous meter,
I muse on the happenstance
of papery white space.
.

Where was I?
On the edge of
something of no importance.
"Heaw, up there!"
.

Meanwhile,
on this side of the wall
Bodhidharma sat,
a grove of pine on that.

MAGNIF I CAT

22 below in Badger Pocket.
A foot of snow on the ground, but
at least the wind can't burn the grass.
I found Witch froze against the haystack.

ET MISERI FECIT POTENTIAM

And mercy, he hath shown strength
painting the upstairs bathroom.
The color is eggshell white.
Whiteonwhiteonwhiteout.

ANIMA MEA IMPLEVIT MEUM BONIS

My anima fills me with good vibes.
Just dig the ice crystals on the tree limbs.
I drain the oil from the VW bus, so it will start.
Not a movement in the air but light.

INCENSE FOR EUROPA

Let the following stimulate the gamma
aminoacid transmission to your neuron synapses.

Reactions can be counteracted with a dose of
dihydroxphenylkalanine.

My horse shed turning out to be a looser
as the horses never use it.

Mount Rainier-an oily silhouette
before the brush of dawn.

My notebook teeming with tootings
and jumbled jottings.

In the hayloft, you revealed the world to me,
and all the wheels are still spinning.

ECOLOGICAL HAZARD

If it weren't for cats
the mice from the timothy fields
would create havoc. As it is
the cats shit everywhere.

A TUMBLEWEED CARRIES
ITS SHADOW TUCKED IN

Round-up's over and the cattle are culled.
The fences rebuilt and the barbed wire
stored. Now, I'm painting the barn.

I use an electric wire brush
to get off the peeling paint until
it catches on the fly of my overalls
and twists into my groin.

I'm out here on the Diamond Hanging J
Floating I Ranch
doing the Bred-Sow-Concentrate Rag.

Berkeley street poet of the 60s, self-exiled to Alaska outback, printer of
chapbooks, occasional cowpoke, treeplanter on the slopes of Mt. St.Helens after the blast, longtime bookseller, Richard Denner is living with his elderly mother in North Bay suburbia, gaining a little weight, getting a little grayer, and still reading his poems in coffeehouses.

Visit his website: http://www.dpress.net

E-mail: rychard@sonic.net

info@physikgarden.com