Childhood

God must have had a childhood much like mine,
Plagued with chaos at the beginning,
Fetal struggles, wet beds, the sun ablaze
Over what was half imagined. The line
Between life and light so close, then thinning

Into matter. And finally amaze
At what appeared to be success. An earth
Enclosing everything that he could think.
Of course, there would always be problems. Birth
Is never easier than death. The wink
Of knowing never easier than not.

I have to hope he spent his childhood in
A tree, engrossed in books. And that he spun
His bike down summer shaded streets and bought
Cold soda from a neighbor. With a pin,
He outlined pictures, held them to the sun.
He must have been a lot like me, so pleased
With being that he’d never let it go.
A being so involved in being God
That he imagined that he never ceased,

Surprised at everything he’d never know,
Convinced that no one else could be as odd.

Are all the stories told about him true?
Did he grow up in North Dakota too?

Fósturbarn

Undir torfu Dakotas liggur faðir minn
Í sunnanverðri hlíð. Ofvaxnar grafir sleggnar
Eftir það heyjaði á ári einu sinn.
Tvö dekkaspor í grasið grænt er vegurinn.
Guðinn hans óx upp en dó hvar grasvörðinn
Grær stutt, er látinn ungur undir loftinu
Of breitt og blátt til að hylja háhiminn.
Ekki vinur af afsakunum, frændi minn:
“Þú getur tekið eftir,” segir hann á mér,
“Því að við komum hingað ekki oft. Þó við
Sláum nógu oft til að sjá hver liggur hér.”
Ég veit það, veit hve hart hann leggur að sér,
Hve vel hann rekur búið. En skil ég ekki enn
Hví hann segir aftur mér að pabbi minn
Var sendur burt til fjölskyldunnar, fóstraður.
Hafði mig langaði að gleyma. Ég veit lífi
okkar verjum við með ókunnugum. Ég veit
Með ókunnugum undir þessum hól
Liggur pabbi minn í Dakota sól.

The Agate Ring

I slip my finger in this metal band,
Circle of silver bearing in its brow
A square of smoke, an agate eye, here now,
Here ninety years ago, here when the land
Was full of force and fire, a furnace fanned
By birth. How could beginning earth endow
Facet with fiber, make quartzite bend, bow,
Straighten to translucence? What on earth planned
This? Why hide the stone in river sand
Mixed with Missouri mud, just where steel prow
Bit into ancient streambed and the plow
Made prairie field? My dad wore it on his hand,
Cut and set in silver. He lost it and
He died. I found it in a vacant lot. How
That was managed I can’t know, but must allow
It’s easier now for me to understand
Improbability. This ring, this stone,
That fit my father’s finger fits my own.

My Father’s Mantel Clock

Electric circles, no analog tics,
Gothic brass hands within a walnut case,
Snug in its niche above the fireplace,
Cycling an ancient system based on six.

He won this clock in 1929.
He died before I knew him. Now at times
I hear him speaking in between my rhymes,
And can't distinguish his low voice from mine.

He died of cancer, 1942,
And all I know of him is what I've heard.
Did he give me a hug, a whispered word?
I have no memories I know are true.

I have the walnut clock won by my dad
And forty years of time he never had.

Mom

Born in a house that sailed Dakota prairie,
Raised with a houseful, Bertha learned to feed
The scratching chickens, clean the wooden dairy,
Scrub the separator till it shone and weed
The kitchen garden where the carrots waved
Their feathers. In the winter, how they sang
Around the organ, sang the songs that saved
John Wesley, songs that Luther tried to hang
On that old German church door. In the spring
She helped in lambing, waded in the slush
The ewes would choose as birth-room. She would bring
The water jug to shearers in the crush
And crowd of fleeces in the pen. When she went
To school she walked or rode the old work horses
Down the dirt road. As this twig was bent
She grew, discovering her sap and sources.

The boarding school in Devils Lake would fill
Her life with winter’s smell of mutton stew.
She was taught to teach, tutored in the skill
Of school, but wound up working with the new
Invention of Professor Bell. She met
A banker. Taken by his looks, good voice,
She stepped to country dances. (In the wet
And muddy fields of France that year the choice
Of life was taken from one million men.)
Johnny came marching home with Spanish flu.
She and her banker beau were wed. Again
She felt like a schoolgirl. Again she knew
The gaze of strangers. A Dakota town
Saw her house filled with varnished wood,
Her beds were filled with babes. Upstairs and down
She whirled and spun a web of will and should.

2

The Chevrolet gave two short jerks, lurched down
Into the ditch and wound itself in wire.
Bertha was still shaking when she got to town.
She never drove again. The days grew drier,
Days of Depression. They lived by the park
And squirrels ran along the roof and crept
Into the bedrooms. How old Mac would bark
Them out again! All had their jobs. She kept
The house; he worked with hides and furs. They built
A family of eight and moved and found
A white frame house, raspberry canes, a lilt
Of birdsong in the cottonwood. The ground
Floor held a walnut radio and look!
A statue of our Lord that Larry broke,
The kitchen and its table where we took
Our meals, the hall where Daddy had his stroke.

Deep in a dream she saw her oldest son
Drown in the southern seas, his hand was pale,
Cold on her shrinking arm. The Lexington
That night went down, but he survived, detail
In a wider world war. Her husband’s death
Left her with seven kids at home, meager
Money, bills, no time to catch her breath.
She made a lot of creamed chipped beef, eager
Eaters cleaned their plates. August heat was canned
And filled concrete cellar with the cool
Glass jars of berries, peaches. She had planned
As best she could. The winter mornings, cruel
Cold, she ladled steaming oatmeal. Winks of
Streetlights glinted on the powdered snow, stars
Sparkled in the arctic dark. Steel links of
Chains grumbled on the tires of passing cars.

3

She watched her growing children, watched them leave
To marry farmers. She watched railroad flares
Burn on the frozen road on New Year’s Eve.
She listened to the band play all her cares
Away on summer mornings. How the drum
Would drown the reeds and brasses and the heat
Would shiver the box elder leaves and come
In waves off concrete sidewalk and tarred street.
The ocean drew them, all Norse blood was drawn
Down to the salt of sea. The house was sold
And half the family moved, soon all were gone,
And Bertha lived alone. She felt how old
The lonely are. She found another man.
He was a fiddler and he loved the life
He led. He showed here where the salmon ran
And let her once again become a wife.

Now when her blood runs slow and cold and thick,
She lives inside cocoons of calm. She walks
With canes. It’s hard to tell when she is sick.
Her voice is low and trembles when she talks.
It rains all winter long. She stays inside
And watches water wash the light away.
Her husband prunes his roses. How she cried
When her own mother died! She waits for May,
Another birthday. Bertha knows the phone
Will ring, the voices of her children with
Congratulations, with the words she’s known
For many birthdays. At her age the myth
Of everlasting life wears thin. She knows
All that she’s known. She knows that too will go.
She dreams she is a little girl who chose
A happy ending and then made it so.

The Snow House

Patty and Dick made the deep-drifted snow
Into an igloo out on our front lawn.
Too small for them so they helped me put on
What fit a North Dakota Eskimo.
Farmers’ overalls, plaid mackinaw, rolled
On wool socks under overshoes and my
Proud head in pilot’s helmet before I
Came out the storm porch door into the cold.

Bootie, Commissar, imaginary
Friends of snowbound five-year-old Larry
Waited impatiently on the rocking chair,
Too ephemeral for the outside icy air.

I sat in the snow house they’d built. They brought
A camera, snapped a picture, trapping time.
Now in the winter of my long life I’m
Seeing what that box camera really caught.

The little boy that’s still inside of me
Snug in a circle of security.

Uncle Robert’s Hayhook

The dog had his own chair, lay in it close
By the door. His name was Bob. Once a bear
Tried to come in and Bob jumped from his chair
To bark him back. My uncle Robert chose
A rifle from the rack, fired in the air.
The bear fled. “Bob’s not good with kids.” Who cares?
Bob should be left alone to deal with bears.
At six years old I could sit anywhere.

In Glacier Park Uncle Robert lived with
Lily in a homemade house, a cow,
Two handsome horses, buggy and a plow.
He shod his own horses. He was a smith.
On the horseshoe anvil he hammered down
A hayhook from a steel bar. My stepdad
Brought it to me when Robert died. I had
Forgotten the long buggy ride to town
Once a week to get the mail, the clear cold
Brook where trout were caught and the speckled hen
Who lost her head for dinner. That was then.

Now above my deck Robert’s hayhook holds
The hat that holds my head that holds the ways
Of Uncle Robert and the olden days.

Eric Agonistes

For the men of the First Special Service Force

Brother Ed worked the farm, far from danger. 
Eric enlisted, a US Ranger.
A Montana sergeant asked, “Who skis?  Who
Can speak Norsk?” And so Eric joined a new 
Unit made up of both Canucks and Yanks:
Rangers, paratroops, Norwegians, all ranks.

Churchill would drop them near German-held fjords
Where they would die.  Instead, where Norman lords
Once ruled, Sicily summoned them to war and then
The Italian beaches south of Rome.  When
The first wave hit the shale shore, a shell
Sent shrapnel deep into his leg.  A hell
Of pain, medics, field hospitals, borne to
A village. After a few months he flew
Home to the States.  
                                        The years of therapy 
And surgery didn’t mend the leg.  He
Returned to Dakota with a pension,
Married, had more kids than you could mention
And spent most evenings in a bar.  When he died
His worried widow and their children cried.

They all succeeded in their separate lives, 
Editors, teachers, preachers, husbands, wives.
Eric would never know the heights they’d reach,
Lying in pain upon his bloody beach.