The Earring

When I was young, high school young, I spent a good portion of my spare time in winter, trapping the local rivers. It was a small town in Minnesota and I was nearing the end of my Tom Sawyer days. I never was much good at it, but I enjoyed my time at the river and made a little pocket change from the few muskrats careless enough to find my labors.
I would follow the abandoned railroad tracks, now just a trail, down to the river. There was a trestle there that no longer served a purpose beyond remembrance. A small chain hung looped across the ends to discourage passage, but me being Tom Sawyer, it always worked the opposite and beyond it I went. I would stand in the middle and lean over the rusty rail and just watch the water rush below. It was cold but somehow always still, even in wind. it was peaceful, it was mine. I learned ideas here, and cultivated them in classroom daydreams.
When I followed the river south, it would lead me to another river and where these two rivers came together, there was a house, distant across the field. Though it was far in the country, it couldn’t be called a farm. There just wasn’t enough big buildings, enough equipment, and the fields grew only scrub. By my coming down the river, it placed me deep in the back yard with a view of the back door. There were chickens, a few goats, a shed and the girl.
I kept a trap there, on that bend. Though I knew there were no muskrats, I knew what time she would come through that back door. I knew her routine and when she entered the shed, and her image in the window and her glances toward me. I always pretended to be busy but I think she knew my game. More and more I became careless and bold and would just lean against the tree and watch, knowing she knew my watch.
The distance was fair and I could only guess and imagine the who that she was. She always wore a skirt, an old coat worn open, men’s boots and a green scarf. A crazy look. Even from a field away.
I thought maybe she was young, abused and belittled. Tortured maybe even. I figured she would always stare down in servitude and she probably was plain, even ugly, but I was drawn anyway. The house was red with white trim, badly in need of fresh paint and something else. I never wondered who else was in there, and only looked to the door she would come through.
One day, when the wind blew and I leaned in stare, she paused on the way to the little building. I should have looked away, looked to my trap, but I didn’t and she started toward me. I watched her wipe her hands in her skirt and walk with purpose toward me. I can’t explain why-it was so unlike me-but I began to walk toward her and we met there in the winter wind, midway in the field of scrub.
Soon, it became clear I had been wrong about so much in my young minds imagining. Her hair flew above the scarf in perfect play and her eyes were blue and full of life. They didn’t look down in servitude but locked onto my own and claimed them without quibble. Her features were both strong and beautiful. I suppose She might have been seventeen or thirty, it was impossible to say. She simply was, timeless and beautiful. I tried to study her in this moment of luck but it was difficult as she wouldn’t release my eyes from her lock. She wore a red kerchief on her hair but it couldn’t contain the wildness. The green scarf fell around her neck and spilled onto a man’s flannel shirt. The coat was just a coat that may never have closed. She wore dirty worn boots clearly designed for a man, and the dirty skirt that came nearly to her knees looked as if it had once been beautiful. Maybe peach with yellow waves playing across it.
I wanted to look at her legs and I did. I couldn’t help myself in my clumsy youth. Though she was clearly anything but large, her legs were full and strong. The sides were white from the cold but the knees themselves were brushed red. I remember I so wanted to touch them to know the smoothness and I wondered what she wore under the skirt. Maybe something clean and light and flowery, or maybe men’s long underwear cut off mid thigh. I did all of this in a single moment of acquaintance. I couldn’t have been more mesmerized in the shadow of this being more beautiful than any girl I had ever seen and more powerful than any man I had ever known. She half-smiled, put her hands in her pockets and spoke.
“Huntin fur?”
I just nodded. I wanted to speak but nothing came out.
She squinted in the morning sun as she studied me, still in smile, and asked my name while lifting her head as if to draw it out of me.
“Rick.” It was strange. Like someone other than me had answered.
Her lip curled up on one side in approval.
“What’s your middle name?”
“John,” I surrendered.
“Rick John,” she nodded. “That’s a good name.”
It was such a strange moment for a boy to find himself tangled in. She had walked into this field and claimed this boy for her morning amusement and he, who was I, went willingly. I asked her name as her study of me continued.
“I don’t have a name. I’m just the girl who does the chores.”
I laughed at the thought and pressed,lowering my eyes in challenge. “Everyone has a name.”
She laughed and shook her head. “Not me.”
I noticed she was staring at my ear. I was only wearing a baseball cap and I watched her move in close and reach. I don’t know if I was flinching or making myself accessible, but my head turned and she touched my lobe. I felt her warmth in her finger’s squeeze. She held it and studied it before letting go and stepping back.
“You’d look good in an earring. Would you like one?”
It was crazy, river rush crazy. My heart was pounding and my blood rushing. How does a boy respond to something like this? A boy out walking rivers wearing out Tom Sawyer and spying out imaginary girls.
“What? you mean now? Here?”
She turned her head a little, pointing with her look to the shed.
“Over there. It’ll be OK.”
In just a few seconds, I had to wonder and decide of this girl who was woman who was man leading me to her shed and driving my ear and placing who knows what there and me walking the river back a changed being, Tom Sawyer drowned in currents rush.
“I’d have to think about that,” I offered in youthful stammer, shuffling my feet.
Her smile faded just a bit, as if she was disappointed but not surprised.
“Don’t think on it to long, Rick John, I just might change my mind.”
I only nodded as my head swam great oceans. I so though wanted whatever this was to never end, to last, and I searched for things to say.
“Don’t you get cold dressed like that?”
Her smile grew again, knowing my thoughts and intent I suppose.
“I have things to keep me warm. And things to do. Nice meeting you, Rick John.”
With that she turned and walked toward the red house with white trim and the little shed of secrets. Just like that. One turn and it was over. I stood and watched her walk, the skirt flowing and the hair flying in wildness, knowing I had come close to something of greatness and had passed on a chance I would probably not know again. I felt something sticky in my hair, and realized it was from the maple I had known in my watching. A passing of seasons.
I never went to that shed, and she never again walked the scrub to make the offer. That was the last year I trapped. Tom Sawyer received a proper burial, and muskrats kept their fur. But everyday of my life, I wish I had gone to that shed. I wish she had driven my ear. I wish I had known her name.

The Road To Somewhere

Who among us has not looked down that road, on postcards and atlases, and wondered what lie beyond the horizon. Beyond our vision. We are a curious people and yet one steeped in propriety and reason. We look but rarely touch, but Lord, how we love the looking and wondering!

I wonder if it goes anywhere
that highway that goes on forever.
the one lined with poles and wire
stretching into nothing

sometimes
it's in a desert,
brown blow on side to side
masking the passage.
the sun always setting,
carless and empty
careless and straight

sometimes it's in Nebraska
corn and grass and boredom.
I suppose someone lives along the lush,
swallowed up and corn fed,
a cycle of forever and John Deere tractors.
and I wonder
if ever they look beyond the work
and wonder if the sky goes on somewhere beyond tradition.

sometimes it's on ice and tundra,
a million miles of filthy black gold
to fill our evil gluttony.
polar bears and martin
starving at our intrusion,
wondering
if the land can outrun the road
and the fear of what's coming.

sometimes it's in a city
but lost in the maze and tangle
of going here and over there
lights of brilliant mess
and dirty sidewalks and dirty ways

but somewhere,
there's the last light,
where the streetlight flickers
and the hillside falls to rivers edge.
where bums and whores keep their options open,
right to wherever, left to what's known.

sometimes,
it's in our heart.
the day before us in requite and remorse
surrender and conquer
the engine of power and passion
with the underbelly of leaky valves.
but the dream stays alive
in straight far away

but somewhere,
there's a road away.
a road beyond the sand,
beyond the farm, beyond the city,
beyond our own entrapment
we so lovingly call us

believing the lie of our own design
we wear brown lenses to hide our fear
and keep to the cul de sac
and well lit way,
cuz it's familiar

but I wonder where those roads go
and if they outrun where I've been,
and if others have gone ahead and wait.
will they leave this earth and reward the chance?
will they teach me a better way?
or are they merely a mirror to a mirror
and no road at all

I wonder where they go

~Rick

Winter Butterfly

Life can be strange. Sometimes things are found where they shouldn’t be. Butterflies do what butterflies do. They know a season and a journey of transformation. I think we see hope in something borne without wings, wrapped in bondage and yet released to fly far in quiet flower-hopping.
Once, on a cold snowy December day, when hope lay shivering in winter’s coffin, I saw a butterfly. Really! I swear I did. Golden brown with two blue spots outlined in green. It led, I followed. The choice was obvious.






I looked upon the fields
of snow and silent seeds,
and dormancy in hush,
as hope fled
in the bleeding of heaviness.

the wind spoke cold in alone
as dreams froze
to cold steel rails
and tools
of rusted labor.

I nodded to the cold blue
of winter sky
and said, “well done, old foe.”
but you looked beyond,
not caring for my sorrow.

and in your indolence,
your arrogance in conquer,
you missed what I could not.

against the backdrop of empty,
in the expanse of extinguish,
it flew on wings of golden brown
and blue-eyed the whisper of hope.

a butterfly in winter.
conceived in Autumn’s dreams,
so far out of season,
impervious to blistered frost
or nature’s harsh order.

it lighted where it would
and laughed to impossible.
it dared the degrees
and cared not for flowers spent.
it’s life was within it’s own,
knowing no dependence
upon the manual.

in the beauty
of broken order,
I followed.

I now know warmth in winter,
snowflakes in July,
and great beauty
in golden brown.

the administrators of this life
wag and hip-swoggle
to our misdeeds
and beauty in chaos.

but we care not.
we fly and we float,
free and fandangled
in seasons
of our own choosing.
~Rick

Remembering Chihuahua

How many moments are stolen by the trick of time and place? How many lifetimes are twisted in ruins due to the happenings of chance? Roads have turns and curves. Decisions to be made and speeds to be determined. Most times we just ride the whirlwind, lost to it's power. That is why there is reflection and regret. But who knows of the next moment in passing? Of it's time and place? That is why there is wanderlust and dreams.

it was a fine spring morning,
the mayflies were dancing,
the geese were choosing homes
and I was fishing bluegills

a small bay on a small lake, called Rebekkah.
I expected the peace of aloneness,
but you were there, when the morning fog lifted

young and wild,
deft with the cast,
owning the dock,
but heavy with child

I took to the reeds,
hiding myself in the spy.
your hair flew on summer promise
and the sunfish answered your bidding

the day became lighter
as my thoughts drifted to who,
and when,
and how I had missed your cast

you glanced, sometimes, and smiled.
it filled my stringer.
I wished I could scoop every fish that ever swam
and place them at your feet
but I was too late.
you would fry them for another

that’s not the first time I met you…

I on a troop ship,
away from home, away from my country,
scared and so alone.

You on the rail,
leaving the hell that awaited my innocence.
two ships sliding by steel on blue,
two souls reaching across time.
I would miss you again
by a hundred feet of moment

you smiled just a little,
I looked away in shy.
but turned again, quickly,
to another smile in tender,
as your fingers lifted from the rail
in silent goodbye, to my tear
that cursed our fate.

but that’s not the first time I met you either...

I was crossing Chihuahua,
that fucken hell of sand and death.
running as always
from then and me.

a stolen horse, a gambled purse
and some rain-bleached leather.

not even a town,
just a place men like me knew.
some bad whiskey, stenched water,
and lost souls.

You were there,
and God only knows why.
for a few coins,
a bathe could be had
in water pured by your pour.

for a few coins more,
a body could be washed
and dried by your knowing hands.

I gave the coins,
knew your wash,
and tasted the salt of your labors.
but you were going north,
and I was going south.
both stubborn in our ways,
shit-faced in attitude.

but that’s not the first time I met you…

we’ve met a thousand times
in a thousand moments
in a thousand happenings

we’ve known oceans and mountains
trains and rivers
cities and farms
streams and stones

we were there,
in the garden.

what is a hairs-breadth?
if words not spoken?
hands not taken?
eye’s not met?
time out of sync?

will you be there in a hundred years?
in a thousand?
on a distant planet?

will I smile a crooked smile,
cast a tired eye,
and say, “ah, I’ve met you before.”

will you smile to my fingers wag?

will you fry me fish?
lead me out of great wars?
bathe my filthy body?
share your apple?

I was crossing Chihuahua one day….
~Rick

A Day With Mom

I’ve written of my Mother before, and of her twisted struggles that tangled her in tortured death. But I’ve never told of the day of indulgence. The day I poured the poison that had long since tagged the toe. Please don't judge me harshly for this or think I excuse it. It just happened. It was all I had left to offer.
My Mother lived much of her last fifteen years in one rehab after another. Pretty good ones. One was Hubert Humphrey’s house. He didn't mind, he was dead. Nothing ever took, though, and eventually the effort was extinguished. Her body was gone. She was rejected for transplant. Only the wait remained.
Many times I would go to the gin mills and ale benches and find my mother there, barely hanging on to swirling stools as others sought to avoid her plague and temper their own. I too, was deeply embarrassed and no doubt displayed so in my demeanor. I stopped drinking and attended AA hoping it would bleed over, but she despised me for it and would taint meals with alcohol secretly as a poisoned apple.
Anyway. one day, within six months of her death, I think, I took her out for the day. It was the middle of the week. It was early. I picked her up and took her anywhere she wanted to go. We hit every saloon within fifty miles and in MN, that’s saying a lot. I took her bowling. She had been a great bowler once. We played cards and pulled losing tabs, we sang and danced to the juke box and I refused to be embarrassed. She drank no more than she would have anyway, just not alone. When the day was far gone, I brought her home and put her to bed.
I didn’t kill her. That had happened long before. For one day, I decided to love her just as she was and not judge her. I chose to be a loving son even if wrong in procedure. Until she died, she talked of that day to anyone who would listen. She beamed in remembrance. She had given up hope for being fixed long ago. We all had. When all hope is gone, so is all fear. If fear is gone what threat can then be administered?
I don’t regret that day of hell raising. I regret every day that I was openly ashamed of her. She is my mother and I love her. Wish I had loved her more. Wish I had Held her and told her, 'It's ok. I gotcha."

I was in Seattle when she died. They called me and told me they were gonna pull the plug at six PM. I went to the airport, had a drink to toast finally rest, and watched the clock tick away the minutes of her life as I waited for departure. Just about the time she took her last breath, I was walking toward the gate as two bald men in strange garb hassled me with their flowers. I tried to be polite and then laughed at the irony. I just walked away with my coat over my shoulder, death in the air and Jerry Garcia echoing the runway. What a long strange trip it's been.
~Rick

The Ruby Red Locket

I’m on the hunt.
borne of necessity, wrapped in fears, weathered in doubt.
the trail winds littered with yesterday’s visions,
all tin and copper and papiermache.

search brings longing, or is it the other?
ckickens and eggs.
necessity just the same

the shadows grow long and deep, as the Sun plays tricks
through leaves of amber.
my mind in hazy gone takes little notice
of the days far passing
and of pathways fade

now a hunger and thirst take hold
to the trails lapse and a journey far spent

the earth is soft here
inviting, yellow and flowing.
my tears free the ease
and feel the draw of hope
to something beyond destinations
and silent stations

there,
through the briar,
the scent of cookies and lime
speak of incongruity
yet perfect sense in ancient knowing

here,
a thousand miles from sea,
I feel a New England breeze tickle my neck
and I follow the salted freshness

a cottage of peach plays my dreams
like trump to a deuce
and in twilights last warning
I find the door
to scented promise

such a fine door
sturdy and miniature castle like.

I smell the cookies baking on sea breeze balloons
and hear the shuffle of feet
as I spy shadows graying the cracks

my eyes take to the knocker
and the wonder of if
as the window’s light
cautions my impudence

instead, a locket, made of ruby red
hangs loose and free, saying you may,
but this only and no more.

a bargain reached, a lift and a twist
and the magic is mine, as I steal away
to the edge of gaited dreams.

it glows in my hand and I draw it to my heart,
swallowed by it’s magic.
hunger and thirst no longer say grace
and careless searchings in hidden longings find rest

enough it should have been,
to warm in it’s glow
but desire is a poor gambler
and the hinges I played

this is where the true magic showed.
the words inscribed danced and regaled
and cheered the wounded heart.
sea breeze cookies and lime peaches filled the air with fulfillment

I felt a pain in my thigh and looked to the cause.
the words before read were now on me carved
and I touched the hot sear

soon I discovered, that upon each new opening,
a new blessing revealed itself
and marked me with it’s brand.
and yet, resist, couldn’t I

as I journeyed , I sought to conceal the ruby red locket.
the magic I feared losing that never was mine.

One night while dreaming in it’s glow
under trees of sticky maple,
I felt it slip and I grasped,
reaching for my salvation.
but I was daft in the vision
and careless in holding

I searched for that peach cottage
with chocolate chip lime.
but I’ll not say if I found it again.
the forest is filled with nosy gardners
with empty dreams

I am though branded forever by it’s blessings
and I glow in it’s magic.
the locket was only the key to greater treasure
and greater hinges.

there is a fire on the hearth
cookies on the rack
shadows in the cracks
New England seas in the winds rush
and I am happy in my place
~Rick

Going Home

I've been blessed. I have a fine wife that loves me and two beautiful children. A roof over my head and food on the table. All in all, tomorrow looks pretty good and today ain't half bad. But still, sometimes...






I'd like to go home
to the streets of my youth
to barbeque chicken on Sunday afternoon,
Dad on the couch finding rest
Mom on the stoop not understanding


to brothers that quarreled
and a sister left behind
summers were different then,
the smells, the noise, the pace
puddles in the alley
tomatoes on the vine
laughter in the yards
sleep from play spent


Girls were fresh and pretty
undefiled in thought
or so it seemed
leaves song in gentle rush
as wiffle balls sailed the fence
and pepsis never canned


swimming beaches and fishing stringers
parades and christmas ornaments
still I smell the steaming dressing
made by hands so long ago silenced.
and taste orange popsicles
that stained my shirt


hunting trips and friends that raced.
car windows steamed
down by the riverside
to youth's embrace
and glances to glory
in future's hold


But home has moved
and silly I'd look
splashing in an alley's mud puddle
trees are beyond my climbing
and prom has donned her slippers


Mom finally understands
from somewhere
and Dad now takes to the step




chicken is just chicken
brothers just avoid
and sister is still, just left behind


all the smells now just a memory
aunts and uncles line crimson's wall
and pepsi tastes like the can


the leaves fall from trees
and the laughter belongs to another's summer passing
abandoned beaches, empty stringers
and the popsicle
long since melted

Frankie Valli
no long haunts the riverside chevy
the fence has grown distant
the game now grown scarce
and young girls...well

I'd like to go home
and say howdy do!
a hero's welcome
to my sported purple hearts
handshakes all around
and do you remember when?


the problem is,
I do remember when.
when today would never end
and tomorrow sailed on the wings of great stallions.
when summer vacation was two weeks away
and christmas promised happiness.


I know to count my blessings
and believe me I do.
I know the boundaries of time travel
are locked in fantasies lore
and I know life is a forward journey
through puzzled gates and lost love heartache
with no way back.
and dreaming makes for thin soup

but forgive me this
and judge me not too harshly
sometimes,


I'd like to go home...





~Rick