March 4, 2009 - Meridian Texas

And it is such lovely poetry one composes at night at the campfire in the cold, drinking wine with the stars overhead – it’s offically nighttime when you can count a dozen stars in addition to Venus

A conventional measuring stick is no more than an artificial language, a symbol – M I Finley

First green – winter wheat fields near Iola Kansas just peaking out of the earth
First daffodil – Beggs, Oklahoma
First forsythia – Okmulgee Oklahoma
First leafing trees – Wilburton Oklahoma
First roadrunner – Tishomingo Oklahoma
First redbud – Weatherford Texas
Last freezing night (so far) – Dinosaur Valley State Park, Glen Rose, Texas

 When lads are left in shell-holes dying slow, / With nothing but blank sky and wounds that ache, / Moaning for water till they know / It's night, and then it's not worth while to wake!) – Siegfried Sassoon

They were talking of some one they all  knew., Sedan Kansas is such a small town and everyone knows everyone. He had just bought a new oil truck – it has a stainless steel tank. "What do you do?"  they asked the stranger. "Run cattle up near Valentine Nebraska, he replied.  . What about yourself?" "The same", was the laconic reply. Then he add the qualifier, "Yearlings". The topic turned to burning. Calves like the young green shoots not the old dry stuff from the previous year. They won’t put on weight on that stuff. "You notify the sheriff?" "We’re supposed to but I never have." " Have someone do your burn?" "No pretty much do it ourselves." "Get together for a burn?" "Some of the bigger ranchers do." " How much do grazing rights go for here?" " Fifteen an acre last year. Probably be about twelve this [year]" ". How many acres you figure it takes per calf." " About eight." A lot of these men who fattened cattle, also took on anything profitable that they could fine. It's too risky and capital intensive to rely just on cattle.  The Sheriff down here says he runs cattle on the side. "Do the burn here", I had asked. "Some of the bigger ones do. But there is a burn ban on now" – there are only about ten counties in the whole state of Texas where there was currently  not a burn ban  – none of them were where I was going (no campfires at night, no sitting around drinking wine, and coming up with poetry that was too good to write down).

The right wing in America is stuck with the paradox of holding a philosophy of ‘conserving’ an actual order it dos not want to conserve – Garry Wills

The sun rises to meet the contrail
Of the Houston to Denver morning flight
There’s a burn ban in effect that covers
Most of the state – charcoal is ok

So there’s nothing to do when it gets
Dark but to climb into the sack and
Read with an LED spot strapped onto the forehead
This is the first night in five that it is not
Expected to freeze – two inches of ice is not nice
The only warmth is holding a ceramic mug
Of hot coffee cupped in
The palms of gloved hands
There shall be no escaping this burn ban
Until the Spring rains come
Moving on will not improve the situation
Five hundred dollar fine and double that
If you gathered the firewood in the
                 Park

The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the Human body – Thomas Jefferson

On the back of the card Joe had written in the name of a poet that they had talked of at the party he had attended the previous night. All members of the English department at the University and they had been talking about him (this poet whose name was on the back of the card that Joe held in his hand) - perhaps our greatest living American poet, they had been proclaiming. Ever hear of him, Joe asks slyly figuring that he was one up on me. Oh yes, I replied. One of my favorite Midwestern poets. I had just two nights before been telling him of my fondness of Midwestern poets and my theory that landscape and climate and the environment in which a poet was raised had a major impact on his poetry. But Joe was not accepting that – great poetry transcends all particularities was his line (and by great poetry he meant that those whot had been canonized - I don't have time to read everyting, he proclaimed). He was taken aback that I  had heard of B H Fairchild but that I had even read several of his volumes and could critique his work (not that I believed he was our greatest living American poet – there are poets with whom you connects and there are ones you struggle with and then there are many that are just downright bad – but to rank them no thanks, that’s an academic’s responsibility - he gets paid to do that) caused him to back off his attack as if he had encountered a maggot infested corpse.

Those who labor the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever He had a chosen people, whose breasts He has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue – Thomas Jefferson

I ask for a tent site, meaning no electrify or water. No water only ment that  you may have to walk a hundred feet to get to a spigot.  "Oh, you want a primitive site" as if they were addressing a headhunter from the New Guinea jungle with bird of paradise feathers in my hair and wearing a loincloth if that. "No" I say "I want and energy efficient site (green if you must)".  It is always the best organized special interest that seems to have command of the language – Our war on terror or pro-life – in this case its the Family Motor Coach Association – modern camping my ass.