Joe Cottonwood

Dear Oregon Trail

 

Did you feel the grind 

when wagon wheels

with iron rims 

rolled slowly 

over sandstone

while oxen hooves 

chipped this path 

across Wyoming?

 

Do you feel this July day

a century gone by

the oncoming thunder

a wind rising as

across the ruts

one spry girl turns

cartwheel after cartwheel

toward our camper-van?

 

I am father

of that daughter.

So, dear trail, are you. 

 

 

Getting to Yellowstone

 

Breakdown in Idaho so I walk with little Lily 

to a hovel of a house where Lily says 

“This doesn’t look like a happy place to live”

because she wonders about such things. 

 

A woman’s voice “¿Quién?”

I explain with gestures we need a phone 

if she has one. Door opens. Cautious, wordless,

face sweaty-slick, she lets us enter.

An ancient dial phone on the wall. 

Lily says “We’re safe here.”

 

Tow driver Ethan crams Lily and me 

into his cab, cool toward us until Lily 

clutching a book, always a book, asks 

“Would you mind towing us to Yellowstone?” 

Then he smiles. We chat.

 

Ethan’s from Oakland, California

so I ask why he’s in potato land.

“I prefer the slow life,” he says

but his wife doesn’t so she has a job in LA.

Lily says “How will you have children?”

Ethan laughs. “Slowly” he says.

 

Lily and I set up a tent in Ethan’s back yard.

Awaiting repair we read Mr. Popper’s Penguins 

by the Snake River where penguins don’t dwell

but might find ice-cold water. I tell Lily 

we’ll reach Yellowstone by and by. 

“No hurry,” says Lily. 

 

 

 

If I were an animal

 

I’d choose otter.

Their philosophy

If fun, do

so why do I dive into this cold lake 

where swimming seems an achievement 

not a pleasure? 

 

There are pockets of warm 

though ice cold if you dive down. 

Little fish dart away while mysterious 

bubbles rise from the murk. 

Sunken branches claw upward from the bottom;

they could scrape your belly like a sword.

 

Probably bad news to bleed in this turbid stew.   

A kid from a canoe asks “Can you swim here?” 

Treading water, I say “Why not?” 

The kid says, “I mean, is there a rule about it?” 

He is not an otter. 

 

 

Joe Cottonwood repairs homes and writes poems under redwood trees in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California where he seeks wagging tails and dog-eared pages. His forthcoming book of poetry is titled buck naked is the opposite of hate.  His website is joecottonwood.com