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Wind Songs from Turtle’s Back by Jack Goodman |
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Uintah Springs Press |
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Fiction and nonfiction from the Intermountain West |
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Wild Horses At Dusk
I remember most the wild horses outracing the river, manes and tails streaming in the wind of their passage, silent hooves unheard above the water’s rush, biting into the earth, scattering rock down the steep banks— racing the river, racing to catch the red edge of day. |
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Turtle myths, myth creation, poems about dogs, sympathy poems, animals poems, poems about animals, Dexter cattle, poems about horses, cafos, factory cattle, Idaho wildlife, western poetry, Dean Koontz, Mary Oliver, Gary Snyder, cowboy poet, nature poetry, animal rights, natural poet, wild horses, Idaho poetry |
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Phone: (360) 985-7180 e-mail: uintahsp@tds.net |
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Saturday Sale at the Stockyard
…But as we move from more antique technology to advanced technology, I think that we’ve advanced as human beings. — County commissioner speaking in favor of factory livestock farms
Rushed through life, spurred on by growth hormones, every meal carefully calculated, milked three times a day— a living machine, a triumph of selective breeding and careful management.
Skid marks lead to the side of the sale yard where they dragged her to lie, her dull hide stretches over bones trying to push through to clean air, loaded stock trailers rattle near, people howdy their neighbors, drink coffee from paper cups, laughing children climb fences.
It is difficult to watch an animal die even when its eyes look past you without reproach, without fear, when the only look is one of unhurried hunger, hunger to know one more breath, hunger to preserve something you can’t see— her great head lifting then falling with extraordinary patience, lifting falling lifting falling then… still. |
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Requiem for Mousie
I think we both knew, though neither of us said anything, that our old dog would die that night and so did she, her restless roaming made it appear she was ready to get on her way, her frail old legs lifted her with more and more difficulty each time she would rise to visit each of us in turn then go to her favorite spot to fold down and rest a while, then up again to warm us with the brown light from her eyes and her muzzle soft in our hands.
The ground was frozen for only the top four or five inches and the pick dug through quickly, the soft moist soil underneath coming out easily with the spade, piling up beside the grave, bright sunlight sparked off the shovel’s gleaming blade and off the frost-laden brown grass in the orchard, the tree limbs were long fingers clutching at the sky.
She must have died at an early morning hour not long before we woke, her body was still limber as I tucked her
in an old green robe, the robe she loved to sleep on— how good the sun felt on my face as I shoveled textured soil on top of her, how small the mound— for almost a third of my life she was a part of it.
This summer when the ground is warm and the orchard trees in full leaf, their green song swelling the air, I will come sit here for a while and remember her brown eyes searching mine and her warm muzzle soft in my hand. |
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Bestseller Dean Koontz: I have seldom read anything that so perfectly captures the deep wonder and the sacred nature of the mundane as does “Feeding Cows After Thanksgiving Dinner.” And “Requiem for Mousie” brought tears to my eyes by virtue of the exquisite details that tap pure sentiment with no trace of sentimentality.
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As a cowboy poet, Jack Goodman is the real thing. Born in Nampa, Idaho, he served in the Air Force before settling in Idaho’s Magic Valley. In the 1970s he started a small herd of purebred Dexter cattle. Today most Dexter herds in the American West are descended from that herd. Besides an actual cowboy and accomplished poet, Jack is a businessman and mountain climber. To celebrate their 40th anniversary, Jack and his wife Mary base-jumped off the 400-foot Perrine Bridge into the Snake River. Jack joined his local Toastmasters Club to overcome his fear of public speaking and today enjoys giving readings and book signings in Idaho and the Pacific Northwest. Wind Songs is Jack’s first book. |
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FAVORITE AUTHORS’ THOUGHTS ON WIND SONGS
Karen Chamberlain, author of Desert of the Heart and former poetry editor of Mountain Gazette: Goodman is a natural poet… From the arch humor of “Conversation With A Bear” to the bared grief of “Requiem for Mousie,” these poems are alive with sensuous details, and it is the details that carry the emotion… “Heron,” in its sternly etched clarity, is one of several poems in this collection that come as close to perfection as any of Wendell Berry’s, Robinson Jeffers’, Gary Snyder’s, or Mary Oliver’s.
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On Writing a Poem When My Cool Cat Deigns to Give Me Some Attention Come My Quick Small Bird Coloring the Air Woodpecker Blackbird Owl Dark Wings Hummingbird Baby Killdeer From the Kitchen Window Memories What If a Hawk Heron Snow Goose October, Wild Geese Calling Picking Rock— March 31, 2006 Sitting on the Front Porch in Autumn Tracks Frozen Dreams Epilogue |
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WIND SONGS TABLE OF CONTENTS
Prologue Fence Row Where Wild Horses Run Wild Horses at Dusk Mustang Chevaux Dans La Camargue Feeding Cows After Thanksgiving Dinner Feeding, Four Below Saturday Sale at the Stockyard Lost Calf Dying Calf Things Rise Ode to an Aborted Fetus Found in the Pasture The Dark Minotaur Canoeing Down the Snake Following the River The Hunter and the Deer The Boy Who Lived With Wolves Requiem for Mousie Watching My Cat
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