were you inspired to write this by the Snyder line, Gary?
If so, do you still need it? It feels like a tacking stitch - the poem would
hold together just as well without it

P-P

>From: garydawg <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: New:  Hay for the Horses
>Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 09:06:24 -0800
>
>C and C please
>
>Hay for the Horses
>
>I was only there once,
>at thirteen
>
>over to Willie's Uncle Shem's
>place on Churchtown Road
>off the main highway
>
>From the corner,
>you could sense the farm -
>the solid house, peg constructed
>from straight grain Douglas fir,
>barn enough to milk 40 head,
>cedar from footlogs to shake top,
>henhouse for 100, maybe 200 layers,
>white-washed horse paddocks,
>rabbit runs,
>model hog pens
>and the fields cleared to carpet green
>from ridge to river.
>
>or you would
>if you didn't see
>
>gray board fences rotted,
>pig pen dried mud,
>land overgrown with blackberries
>and scrub alder from run to hilltop,
>barn packed with boxes and barrels of beer bottles -
>Oly, Rainer, Lucky Lager,
>chicken coop chock full of soda empties -
>Nehi, Mission Orange, Hires,
>house yard, chicken yard, barn yard,
>garden plot covered with junk and treasures,
>mountains of odd glass containers
>broken by time and weather,
>Uncle Shem's shattered fortune.
>
>In '44, Uncle Shem returned from France,
>broken by winter's war,
>to a farm considered the best along the river.
>By '46, his glass obsession
>washed across barn and yard,
>no room for cows, chickens or turnips.
>By my visit in '57, the tide had carried away sons, wife -
>the last vestiges of sanity
>crystallized in dusty milk bottles,
>dirty peanut butter jars,
>and waves of empties,
>
>no hay for the horses.
>
>
>(Title from a poem of the same name by Gary Snyder.)
>
>Feb guest is TE Ballard and Gar does garbage  at:
>http://gardawg.homestead.com/gardawg.html,
>
>Poets for Peace.  ˇPoemas sí, balas no!




Perpetua Pullman


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