the Heart of the Sourdough

There where the mighty mountains bare their
fangs unto the moon,
There where the sullen sun-dogs glare in the
snow-bright, bitter noon,
And the glacier-glutted streams sweep down at
the clarion call of June.

There where the livid tundras keep their tryst
with the tranquil snows;
There where the silences are spawned, and the
light of hell-fire flows
Into the bowl of the midnight sky, violent, amber
and rose.

There where the rapids churn and roar, and the
ice-floes bellowing run;
Where the tortured, twisted rivers of blood
rush to the setting sun-
I've packed my kit and I'm going, boys, ere
another day is done

*****

I knew it would call, or soon or late, as it calls
the whirring wings;
It's the olden lure, it's the golden lure, it's the
lure of the timeless things,
And to-night, oh, God of the trails untrod, how
it whines in my heart-strings!

I'm sick to death of your well-groomed gods,
your make-believe and your show;
I long for a whiff of bacon and beans, a snug
shakedown in the snow;
A trail to break, and a life at stake, and an-
other bout with the foe

With the raw-ribbed Wild that abhors all life.
the Wild that would crush and rend,
I have clinched and closed with the naked
North, I have learned to defy and defend;
Shoulder to shoulder we have fought it out-
yet the Wild must win in the end.

I have flouted the Wild. I have followed its
lure, fearless, familiar, alone;
By all that the battle means and makes I claim
that land for mine own;
Yet the Wild must win, and a day will come
when I shall be overthrown.

Then when as wolf-dogs fight we've fought, the
lean wolf-land and I;
Fought and bled till the snows are red under
the reeling sky;
Even as lean wolf-dog goes down will I go
down and die.

Robert Service- 1907

barn star / granite wind

barn star

things we can't do without
where's the truth in that
identities are scrapbooks
clothes and hairstyles
pinned to the surface
dates even have lost
through counted repetition
time like a barn star
fashionable and frivolous
if precise preposterous
things we can do without

granite wind

much dreaming these days
past visions present
vivacious possibilities vying
pour venir prochain
and poorly edited at that
at least the source is known
and distrusted blithely
like the back of your hand
making the same decisions
as my earlier self
and wondering what
beaudelaire would have
for his last meal
if you are going out at
the hands of your own clock
would you want dinner or breakfast
appellations can wait
but usually get there before you
refusing uselessly to be changed
granite under water
sand in wind
all you've seen and done
like a collage of thankfulness
glazed in distance, difference, divergence
framed unwillingly between the
waning waking what do you know
and the probability of disbelief

Poems by Robert Lescatre
Painting By James Gagnon "Maroon Bells" (Acrylic on paper 25inX20in)

May Day

Hope you had a good May Day.