lefse

.









a little cinnamon
sprinkled on our lefse --
snow in Dakota

like the wind

They'd sent us to fetch fence and stakes to surround the twenty foot hole where the twelve inch pipe lay. A hundred and fifty pounds of pressurized gas within, we were preparing to tie-in from a far off well to the main line. Anything could happen. Asphyxiation from deadly hydrogen sulfide, or a stray spark to the odorless, tasteless gas in the line itself might cause instant immolation, assuming tons of clay and earth didn't bury you alive first.

You hear the bosses talk about taking a chewing out "like a man" from time to time. How do you reconcile that sudden realization of impending doom? With honor and dignity, or scream like a little girl as you piss your pants?

Josh was driving the one-ton dualie back to the oil derrick's pad. Traversing the dirt road across the prairie's mounds and hills, he began to pick up speed. This nineteen year old from Florida had more gumption than most, I'll testify to that, but with a few less brain cells at his disposal. Formerly the whipping boy of the roughneck crew, I had taken his place. This pleased him to no end.

As the truck gained speed it left the ground over the high spots, taking us airborne for precious seconds. I'd raise my head to see if anyone was coming the other way. No matter what, it would be too late if they were. I held tight to the hand grabs like I'd mounted a runaway steed. Josh just stared bug-eyed above his leering mug.

"We're doin' a hundred miles an hour!" he croaked.

With out checking the speedometer, I watched the telephone poles go by like sticks in a tornado. Then I laughed, loud and hearty, from deep within the gut.


a cock pheasant
flushed from high grass-
wind on the prairie

The Game

The Game


After the match, lively chatter and lukewarm cervezas flowed in earnest. The common language of who could pick out the open man, the places we’d seen, and what the future held so far from home rattled off metal clad trailers and diesel behemoths liberally dusted with the pulverized clay that permeates every surface in the heart of the Bakken. Observing moments of the beauty and encompassing kinship that is soccer, some of the spectators were there with ulterior motives. Could any of these able-bodied young men be recruited for a start-up oil company in dire need of labor?

Huge amounts of money were at stake, a deal made or lost depending on the whims of man and nature and highway conditions from New Mexico through the Texas panhandle. The whole affair was a gamble from the starting whistle, conjured by chance encounter on the trail and just as easily blown away with the prairie wind. The prize for the victors of the impromtu competition? Fleeting glory and a twenty-four pack of the least expensive beer.

(to be continued)

the half-moon gone red -
a cloud of dust thickens
the atmosphere

Patch

I was up in the oil patch when I showed Bobby, that old Navajo elder, my brand new cowboy hat. I wanted to know what part of the country it hailed from. It definitely had a distinct presence, no doubt about that, and not something I'd normally wear.

Just what I thought. Texas. Damn straight, Missie, and a 10X besides. What that means is it's tall and sturdy, and can't be blocked no more. It's straw, like a working man would wear, but with some kinda resin coating applied so to stand up to any kind of weather, dyed white, so to reflect that noon day heat. It fits real good, nice and snug, so it won't blow off in the wind nor fall off in a tumble.

Bob, on the other hand, he's gotta 4X, which is far more pliable, so as to give with the wind or the rain, and it's shape can be shifted to almost any form imaginable.

I pointed to the crow's feather tucked in mine. It molted from one of those city crows where I come from, found in the alley by my front door just before I started on this journey. I stuck it in there for a little bit of luck. Cocked to one side, it gave that hat more than a little bit of flair.

I told him how they sometimes talk to me in their guttural city voices. Sometimes I'd talk back. Maybe ask a question directly, in my tone of voice or the way I'd look. They might look back at me then, turn their heads to eye me curiously. Sometimes they'd cry out angrily, others plaintively, a clucking sound, lonely or sad. Trying to warn me, I thought, or, just maybe, trying to encourage?

He looked at it for a time, and then said it was medicine - it can cure cancer. I figure that's a good thing, 'cause I've been smokin' a lot more lately, you know?



the hawk moth takes
its last sip of nectar -
the Bakken and the shale

Prairie Rose

A mile or two west of Dickinson, ND, and the cell and wi-fi connection gadgets are barely operable. I found if you stand on a rock you bring a signal in. But mostly I go into town now and then for smokes and supplies, find some high ground to make calls, search the state website.

Along the way I met some long-time residents, their dialect full of 'd's' in place of 'th's' and a way of speaking like old Scandinavians in Minnesota, yet oddly westernized, as though any moment they might burst into cowboy song.

Like lots of older folks they seemed starved for conversation, for someone just to listen.

This old fella come up and asked me where it was I was from, what my plans were and, mostly without prompting, talked about how the town had changed with the oil boom - real estate prices through the roof, old-timers selling out and leaving, and 'wasn't all the traffic just awful'? I commented on the trusting nature of the town's people, and for a minute he seemed to brighten some.

I forget what else it was he said . . .


prairie rose-
a barn swallow suspended
in ceaseless wind


;;;

 

Rawson

wind from the prairie
dries my sleeves-
these purple flowers
all bearing thorns





;;;

Happy Trails

Little Muddy

milkweed spills its silk -
abandoned shacks, the barn, a loo
recall a time before
















dust and grease, the sticky clay
a drilling rig's relentless motion






on the longest day; the heat of the sun















the Little Muddy is dappled
while sunset tints the twilight, too
as for the mayflies' fall
so begins the sparrow's reign

The World's Largest Buffalo

drought-
this light through the clouds
casts no shadow






hold on tight
and lean into the wheel-
wind from the south





ominous clouds-
the world's largest buffalo
come face to face

new moon
choosing one book
before I go

boom town

Boom Town

North Dakota - $17 bucks an hour to work at the McDonald's in Williston. There's a true measure of a boom town. A talk with the coaches of the visiting college baseball team served to verify the facts. Only problem is, there's no where to stay. There's "man camps" out by the oil fields, or, you could sleep in your truck, live in a tent by a tributary of the Missouri River . . . if a fellow had a Winnebago . . . they won't let you park in the Walmart lot no more, though.

14 days on, 14 days off, working on the rigs. They make damn good money . There's construction work to be had, they're building so fast. They need truck drivers to haul pipe, to haul water . . .

It was my father's birthplace, 1914. They still wore sidearms then, for the rattlesnakes, mostly.

Grandfather farmed and held most of the mortgages on the land surrounding the town of Rawson, population 100, give or take a few - a place that no longer exists - disappeared with the dust across the prairie.

At the height of the Depression he tore up all those notes, returned the land to the people settled there. Land flat and barren as an inland sea, but for the waving grasses of summer, and winter's boundless snow. 

towering clouds --
a step into Laurasia's
primal ooze