Don Thompson has published a few chapbooks over the years. His poetry has appeared in several anthologies of California writing, including California Heartland (Capra, '78) and Highway 99 (Heyday, '99). He lives on his wife's family cotton farm near Buttonwillow, and teaches at a prison and at a community college. Mr. Thompson's chapbook, Been There, Done That is currently available from March Street Press.
My scout handbook told me it meant rain;
Our rain comes without much warning:
Blackbirds gossip on the lawn. They tell all,
and though it has rained
in the past, inherently dry half century,
I can't recall clouds like a washboard,
like warm buttermilk or surf-
riffles stuttering across blue sand.
Not around here.
a few mares' tails on the wind, a quick raid,
and it's gone.
We have no weather lore, no sign
except sunset slowly burning itself out
like an inaccessible grass fire…
and who can interpret that?
but don't publish a tabloid for us.
We know nothing.
The clouds will remain noncommittal,
and the hawk perched on the telephone pole,
aloof but not hostile,
will keep the secrets entrusted to him.
Frost glistens along the furrows
Ask the ruined entrepreneur: money
that loses a fortune in light each month
Normal with age, says the ophthalmologist,
Now I must become miserly,
must learn late in life not to waste it,
like a cash crop abandoned last fall
when the price collapsed;
we know another year has gone under.
is just the way he keeps score.
He is confident and undaunted,
and so is the moon
and makes it all back again.
But tonight, watching it rise,
my eyes cloud like cold breath.
who sees two or three new cases a day,
but irreversible…
unlike winter and the waning moon.
earning interest on the few hours I set aside
from working to pay bills that accumulate
even on a dead man's desk;
though I've been profligate on a fixed income,
tossing away whole years
like loose change to a panhandler.
The snubbed mud hens (actually coots,
Pinheaded, with white chicken like beaks
Not plump enough to tempt us-
they have nothing to fear.
we root for mud hens as an underbird.
something with Sable or Ebony in it,
an even uglier name) ignored disrespect,
drifting by us not far from shore….
You smiled for the first time that day.
and eyes like a psycho blackbird,
they have, nevertheless, God given dignity.
Nothing ever ruffles those slate feathers.
though the name spoils appetite anyway,
and somehow we know such fowl
would be tough and too earthy-
We'll never mock those spindle shanks
or the pale, spongy, oversized feet
they keep hidden beneath the water:
And I'll always love them,
my love, for when we tried to help
by inventing an upscale name,
and settled on Duck Noir,
you laughed and forget that an hour earlier,
when you were angry, my own name had been mud.
Shepherds unspool fencing and lead their flock to pasture not far from here-
For hours, we can hear her helpless bleating. Tradition,
But these shepherds come back as soon as possible
chattering to each other, to her, and to us, in Basque or Quechua.
1.
Up close, with your face rubbed in Weltschmerz, it's overripe,
2.
nevertheless, we love it, no matter what, for blossoms and autumn colors,
To be given something that frustrates worse than something withheld
Or you look away as if it's not lying there on the table like cash in an But once or twice, three times or four, maybe five, you rip the pretty paper
Years later you can easily remember how it was wrapped, but not the trinket,
All text and images in The Central California Poetry Journal are copyrighted. Copyright by © by Scott Galloway2002. All rights are reserved. See main Journal page for
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Authors and poets submitting original materials to this journal retain all rights to their original work, except those rights specifically assigned in writing to Solo Publications including the right to publish the submitted work in The Central California Poetry Journal. The poems on this page are copyrighted by the author. Copyright © Don Thompson 2002 All Rights Reserved
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all except one old ewe who's fallen beside the road, too weak to go on.
ancient necessity, would say: Leave her. What else can we do?
and lift her onto their flatbed truck--such gentle men, almost sheepish,
Who knows? But we can hear the love in it.
This Earth
With professional detachment, with one seraphic step backwards, this
earth becomes an unimaginable blue mango dusted with sugar.
Succulent. You could pluck it from orbit and eat it.
already half-rotted in fact; or seems like cheap wax fruit
cracking along dry fault lines, melting at the core.
We imagine water's been domesticated because we drink from our hands,
forget that hills gone mad become mudslides.
This earth keeps coming unglued, crushing us beneath our own rubble;
for unexpected rain, for the silent intimacy of snowfall,
and for the comfort we feel awake in the dark listening to the wind.
Love Itself
makes no sense. And so, more often than not, you shrug, say you're sorry,
and give love back, unopened, ribbon and bow intact.
envelope.
The heart can be such a bureaucrat, a paperwork tiger,
not proud at all and less greedy than panicked when offered a bribe.
on the off chance the gift giver has guessed right.
You lick your fingers and count those small bills someone has counted before.
which you pawned, or how you wasted the money. Flat broke, all you have left
is love itself like a locked safe with nothing in it--strong and empty.
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