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walt.mcdonald@TTU.EDU

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Backpacking when Our Son Was Overseas

Hawks flew away, curving a low, slow arc
beyond us, gliding on thermals west of Estes Park.
Pausing on boulders for breath, we caught on film

raccoons and pumas, the whir and blue-green sheen
of hummingbirds. Not many knew we were there,
gray-haired and heaving for breath.

Rams with furry scrotums reared and twisted
as if stiff necked, horns curved like trophies.
Trout in the shallows shimmered and vanished.

We offered hours to hawks and marmots, trading time
for far, rare shots of bears. Our son in Bosnia
waited with buddies in bunkers, nothing we could do

but climb and watch for hawks. Stiff knees
and bifocal eyes were ours, and if film turned out,
we'd take back spruce and boulders we became.

Winding down steep switchbacks to the plains,
we didn't feel like Moses making sweet water gush,
rocks ringing like bells, springs rushing out for all.

We knew what we'd find back home, the same wide skies,
stacks of mail and grass ten inches tall.
In time, the telephone rang from Bosnia,

our son sent somewhere he couldn't tell,
the risks of having children. All summer,
we mowed the lawn and showed good neighbors

prints of vacation quickly gone, bobcats
and warblers, the one long view of a fawn
and a puma crouched, about to leap.


First published in Brooklyn Review (1997).

At the Air Show

World-War fighters crank, loud pistons clattering,
propellers spinning smoke of a war when I was a boy
creasing Big Chief sheets to send them soaring

into the sun. I walk these ramps retired, strolling past jets
with double tails, exotic rockets strapped to pilots
young as my sons--a hundred crews in flight suits,

and not one face I know. Transports I flew to Saigon
were fat and slow, not paper-thin alloys like these sleek jets,
a blend of power and avionics. Ramps lead us through cargos

longer than Noah's ark, hollow like caverns,
no way these beasts could fly. Thunderbirds roar
through perfect rolls in skies I believed we owned

before buddies learned how easy landings had been in peace,
how far from home a jungle is, how cold black granite feels
on a wall in Washington, the simple names of friends.


First published in The Worcester Review (1997).

The Beach at Corpus Christi

This is the moon we wanted,
space with angels waving sheer,
fluorescent wings.
I could let go and live with gulls
forever gliding. They never stumble,
never bump each other's wings,
all appetite, angling for handouts.
Gulls catch whatever's thrown,
even rocks, dropped
as soon as they taste them.
I could do what they do,
gullible and hawkish.

Another mile, we turn
and take the same way back,
tossing the last of the loaf
straight up, that gull we intended
robbed by a beak on wings,
a cunning dive. Waves fall like dominoes,
crashing over and over.
We stroll this beach
so close I can hear you, your shouts
like a whisper, the roar
of all words ever told. Now it begins,
ebb tide, the endless waves.

Let crabs reclaim the sand,
let sharks obey the moon.
Our children survive without us,
flung out like Texas stars.
Their children watch the stars
and wonder what they are.
We're not alone at Corpus Christi.
In bed, we'll spin long talks
into sleep and let the waves
be silent. We'll wake at dawn
and sip hot coffee on the beach,
the sun slower than us but coming.


First published in Burning Light (1995).

Sleeping on Open Range

In bedrolls we hear them slither at night
on bellies made for prairies. Snakes hunt
because their god is the breeze in moonlight.
Our shoulders touch the flat, familiar earth.
So much of this ranch is sand. Dark is the owl's,
also. Stars are the sand at night, the world
in slow motion. I've mashed the pedal down
and scattered buzzards at eighty on the road

and seen the sagging fence posts lift. Stroke by stroke
I've rowed all night, casting a silver hook
in moonlight. It comes to me at three or four,
in darkness, paddling like a dog in a lake.
Dreams make no sense at dawn when the wind shifts,
restless as river mud. So much of the world
is sand, so much is water. I saw a friend limp
back to Da Nang with an engine out. Smoke swirled

from the manifold. Before he crashed, he made
his crew bail out, pop, pop, chutes bursting
open and dangling safely down. They shaved
his flesh and blood from the wreckage, staking
the crater with yellow tape, off limits,
draped plastic around the site. I've seen a barn
go under south of Brownfield. Whoever built it
pounded nails to last. He thought no way those walls

could fall. Wherever we ride, hawks lift
and glide, hardly a beat of wings. Like snakes,
our geldings know where to go. When I shift,
old leather creaks. Faith is trying to take
water in your fists. Cattle graze in drought
or prairie mud, wading hard rain that floods
down steep arroyos. Even deep ponds dry out,
plains where nothing comes easy. Sniffing blood,

owls dive and pluck snake eyes like grapes. Tonight
except for thunder, the plains are calm. Up high
a contrail's going somewhere in a hurry. Soon
we'll hear the sound, a roar as far off as the moon,
the easy sliding of snake scales over twigs,
the swift and silent riffle of wings.


First published in Slant (1997).

The Middle Years

Old tunes go better with friends
turning their backs on darkness.
We listen to meat on a sizzling grill,
the blazing of logs in the campfire.
We like the dark boring hours

when the moon is up and rushing.
How many nights did tribes lie down
together here, in love with each other,
stranded far from mountains?
We've seen their campfire carbon,

thousands of years of flints
in regional museums. They risked
the fangs of wolves and bears
the size of bulls. Our wolves
and polar bears sway from paw to paw

beyond moats in the local zoo.
Tonight, our ears are tuned
to fiddles and bittersweet guitars
under stars so bright they blaze.
Now, the fires are ash, barbecue

gnawed to the bone. It's late,
and miles of barbed wire
sprawl around us, nothing to do
but rake the coals and wave
to old friends driving off.


First published in RiverSedge (1992).

© All Copyright, Walt McDonald.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.