Oregon Ode #1




By

Jerry Dale McDonnell

Published: http://deadsnakes.blogspot.com/2016/01/jerry-dale-mcdonnell-three-poems.html
Jan. 18, 2014

Half moon bright light Oregon Night
Coyotes howl and yip around my camp.
They frighten me a little, so many of them
Surrounding me from everywhere.

I am alone, yet I own my place
And fall asleep in my worn, prime
Goose down sleeping bag assuring
Myself if I don’t frighten you
You won’t frighten me.

While hundreds of miles away
Millions of serious people
Frighten me more.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Regretful Death

Published in Cirque, Vol. 7, No. 2; 2016 www.cirquejournal.com by  Jerry Dale McDonnell Above the routine of the rasping, cutting sound of the crosscut saw the noise and demeanor of the late-September afternoon woods changed. We didn't immediately quantify the change. We just knew it changed. The odor of standing pine and fir, of sawdust and fresh cut wood, the light dampness of the air, the gurgling water in the creek dancing around rocks all remained, but something had changed. Even the camp robbing Gray jays in the trees were on alert.   Living in the woods, paying attention is just the way of things. Sounds, smells, clouds, the wind, changes in plants and trees, migration and habits of animals are like news on the radio. In the timber-pole corral our lead and riding horses were agitated, which is a blip on the radar. Joker, the smallest, but oldest and wisest horse of the herd snorted, laid its ears back briefly then spun and jumped to the other side of ...
Read more

Glory Royal

Published in Over The Transom #27: February, 2016 by Jerry Dale McDonnell It’s our bar. A day’s end hard work bar with a too recent nod toward tourist hippie/yuppie types. It’s long been my comfort zone where I’ve spent much of my dead-end life and where she found me and took a hold of me and twisted me around. Bras of various cup sizes—donated after the shots and beer back have done their work—hang down from the ceiling like plucked chickens. Twas usually around midnight when the occasional gal pulled her bra out from under her blouse, or if the booze had brought her to stupid, tits were bared. Hooting and hollering of tit bragging and admiration is standard. Two visiting strangers started the collection years ago but now most of the hundred or more hanging bras are from young just turned legal drinking age city girls sometimes escorted by long hairs with unearned holes in their jeans on a weekend toot to our small village in the mountains just shy of Canada. We, a bare knuck...
Read more

Beluga Fall

Published in Explorations, ©Jerry D. McDonnell, 2000 Anchorage, Alaska; September. 1993 He said he was sorry. Some people believed him. The judge didn't. He was still a teenager . . . eighteen.   They gave him sixty-five years. No trial. West of Dillingham, Alaska; March 1976. The view from under the bed is limited: six shoes on the bare boards,   the empty whiskey bottle spinning crazily. The gun-shot explodes; cringing, he holds his ears, his mouth frozen open. A body slams to the floor. The bottle stops spinning against the fallen face of his older brother whose cheek is smashed up against his eye, his tongue hanging from the open mouth. A second shot rocks the bare, wood walls of the tar-paper shack; he flinches, banging his head on the bed springs and bites his tongue in terror tasting his own blood. Another body shakes the room as it hits the floor; the face of his older sister twitches as it hammers into the bare wood.   Dead, his brother stares a...
Read more