Long, long ago.

In the distant past?

Memory fails me.

But you have faint tracings?

Hardly anything comes back.

So, you gave it up?

It just left me.

So what did you replace it with?

What.

Hunting-following the hounds.

Nothing.

But what do you do with yourself now?

I wander around from place to place.

Aimlessly?

What's there to aim for?

That must get old after a while.

I don't know what else to do.

June Bugs

Someone hunting in the night. Shooting repeatedly along my tree-line. Dull sudden thuds, then blank. Then shots again. Someone wanting something dead. Each time the shots come I see his finger squeezing down: fat, black and blue, oily knuckle. In the pauses nothing moves but the fan and night bugs. Out of nowhere, hard little red June bugs come crashing into the porch light, hit the screen door, and go crashing to the floor. They're all around me now, spinning on their backs, dying between my bare cracked feet. I'm just sitting here and this happens. It's beyond belief.

Herdbound

Horses are calling each other across big acres. Acres of fresh-cut hay where the tractor's stripes lay dark and flat against the blue-grass morning. These are the fastest horses in the world. These are the horses the Arabs want, the Irish, the English, the Germans. The whole world converges on this tiny spit of Dixie limestone to throw money in the air as if it were confetti. These horses don't know their day is coming to wear a paste-on hip number and parade in tight circles while the bid-spotters scream and their sale electronically climbs into the millions. Those anonymous bidders don't see them now, the way they are, racing along black fence lines, screaming across stands of hickory and locust; sensing something in the air, something coming to get them, from far far across the high seas.

Nine Below

Inside, it's the exact opposite of the outside. It's like a movie set in here. Tropical banana plants, palm trees, miniature tangerines, exotic purple orchids, caged parrots screaming their heads off, finches twittering. The fireplace and baseboard heat are cranked up so high the ceiling's dripping. Outside-just on the other side of the tall, doubled-paned bay windows-it's nine below zero and even though the gigantic sun will soon be blazing high over the frozen St. Croix River, the ice remains eighteen inches thick. Thick enough for employees of the Andersen Windows company to drive straight across it from Wisconsin to the Minnesota shore and save a half-hour's commuting time. At the crack of dawn you can watch them through these steaming windows starting out with their headlights gleaming, crawling along in weaving amber lines through the fishing huts and little square tents, smoke wisping out their vent pipes. Fishermen huddle inside these tents frying bacon and walleye, tossing back schnapps and listening to rabid talk radio throw opinions at them from a world far away. They're happy campers watching for the slightest twitch of fluorescent green bobbers. I don't get it myself. I was raised near the Mojave where we slept with the windows wide open and watched the distant foothills burn through the night.

Stillwater

The electronic chimes from the brick Lutheran church tower are playing "Onward, Christian Soldiers" with crisp mathematical precision in the chill morning air. The melody line pierces the windows of every house in the neighborhood. No one escapes. It is a spectacular, bright fall day in the St. Croix River Valley; powder blue skies, fluffy clouds, no wind to speak of. The kind of day, as they like to say up here, that is the reason they all suffer the most godawful winters on earth. It is also the fifth day in a row that bombs have been falling on distant Kabul and Kandahar.

The hardwoods along the banks of the Mississippi are blazing yellow and orange. Bald eagles and giant osprey cruise the inlets for walleye. In the distance, delicate sailboats and fishing skiffs ply the little harbor in silent slow motion. Everything here is quiet and peaceful beyond words:

Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war

with the cross of Jesus going on before

Dawson, Minnesota

(Highway 212 East) Gnomes

and the Dead

and corn

and soybeans

and Cenex

and Gnomes

on the lawns

and the Dead laid out

and the corn

horizon to horizon

sea to shining sea

Demon in the Woods

Every evening this little yellow dog of mine comes rushing up to meet me; nervous, panting, turning in circles around my legs. I don't know what it's all about. It's as though she expects me to save her from some demon in the woods. I try to tell her I have no answers to it. No solution. I'm scared the same way myself, sometimes. I don't know what about. There's something out there lurking, though. No doubt about it. I can hear its fiery breath behind the old black locust. I can see it sometimes swooping through the fields. Sometimes it hovers right above me. I don't look up. I keep my eyes tight to the ground. Right in rhythm with my walking stick.

Gardening in the Dark

Weeding my garden in the pitch-black dark. In the cool of the night. And the mockingbird raving as though it were light. And the moaning train. And the cow calling and the calf answers back. And the candle hysterically beaten in the breeze.

It's all adding up.

Happy Man