with the sun as straight as the road
there is a wind tattoo
upon my brae hands designed by which route I
have taken
through Milwaukee County farmland where
a Soo Line freight will pass on the track
side of me & on the field's edge to the
other a John Deere tractor pulls a
spreader in a turn: all reflection in pond
water is still & ahead
full reverie in tire hum inks raw prayer to
motorcycle designs that respond
to clutch upon religious shifts.

the toolbox has been spilled
onto the office floor behind
the garage & there are books
with wrenches thrown in them
for poetic meter ia valuable

when it chugs inside
a process evolved
up from literary
origins down
roads upon
which chunks from an

old wooden bridge foundation
laid over with blacktop will

protrude in the worn spots
& present dangerous travel
that no book tells you how
to avoid & the wrench then
with instinct replaces any
mechanical study: the ride

will take you
where it goes.

along 5 Mile Road off Interstate 94
The Holy Ranger met up with that
lost rider often heard on
Wisconsin back routes
rumbling near gravel
shoulders on an Iron Redskin at the
edge of summer
just before the heat rises from day
clear into evening's ground gully fog
.
the year had been 1846 & this
ghost rider was among the Texas Ranger
bunch riding victoriously to secure US
borders & when in the following year
the advancing horsemen lost their
commander fresh from meeting Samuel
Colt who put a brace of Walker pistols
in this brave leader's leather gunbelt
this man went down with
Captain Walker a musket round
into each (from
that saddle then he fell into summer's
early Wisconsin rural roads where once
into Holy Ranger Territory he dismounted
.
"poetry rides the wind
we prowl" the old gent
said: with history's
footpegs under
his boots to balance
against headwind The
Holy Ranger along an open Heartland
cement trail
snapped handgrip reins
& saluted this phantom patriot who
survived to ride upon one summer's
edge in sacred territorial vision.

Search: Tripod The Web