Sooner Blue

He had driven half the night
From far down San Joaquin
Through Mariposa, up the
Dangerous Mountain roads,
And pulled in at eight a.m.
With his big truckload of hay
behind the barn.
With winch and ropes and hooks
We stacked the bales up clean
To splintery redwood rafters
High in the dark, flecks of alfalfa
Whirling through shingle-cracks of light,
Itch of haydust in the
sweaty shirt and shoes.
At lunchtime under Black oak
Out in the hot corral,
--The old mare nosing lunchpails,
Grasshoppers crackling in the weeds--
"I'm sixty-eight," he said,
"I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.
I thought, that day I started,
I sure would hate to do this all my life.
And dammit, that's just what
I've gone and done."

by Gary-Snyder

"Hay for the Horses" from Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems (North Point Press). Reprinted with permission.

In the musty light, in the thin brown air
of damp carpet, doll heads and rust,
beneath long rows of sharp footfalls
like nails in a lid, an old man stands
trying on glasses, lifting each pair
from the box like a glittering fish
and holding it up to the light
of a dirty bulb. Near him, a heap
of enameled pans as white as skulls
looms in the catacomb shadows,
and old toilets with dry red throats
cough up bouquets of curtain rods.

You've seen him somewhere before.
He's wearing the green leisure suit
you threw out with the garbage,
and the Christmas tie you hated,
and the ventilated wingtip shoes
you found in your father's closet
and wore as a joke. And the glasses
which finally fit him, through which
he looks to see you looking back—
two mirrors which flash and glance—
are those through which one day
you too will look down over the years,
when you have grown old and thin
and no longer particular,
and the things you once thought
you were rid of forever
have taken you back in their arms.

by Ted Kooser

"In the Basement of the Goodwill Store" from One World at a Time. © The University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985. Reprinted with permission.

in the Junior Baseball League in 1950.
Twice divorced, without children,
Howdy liked his Schlitz too much.
Our team was his only other pleasure,
but we were taking our licks
at the bottom of the standings,
embarrassed and blaming our manager.
Gus Thurman arranged a petition
for Howdy to be replaced and
brought it around to our houses.

Of course we won our next game.
Howdy was boisterous and thrilled.
After he thanked the umpire and
shook hands with the losing manager,
he turned with a smile to his team.

Just then—at that very moment—
Thurman handed him our petition.
Howdy read it carefully, studied all
our signatures. When finally he raised
his stricken face, we were all looking
at him from the bench, our mouths open
like a row of empty, baby swallows.

It was dusk and shadows were long.
Our girlfriends waited and watched,
their tawny legs crossed in the bleachers.
A distant freight, full from the mills,
whiffed its way through the switches
out of town. A covey of dirty wrappers
flapped up across the first base line.
The neon sign in the window
of the Cricket Bar and Grill
across the Eighth Street bridge
blinked once, then came on full.

by Paul Zimmer

"Howdy Duncan Managed Our Team" from Crossing to Sunlight Revisited. © The University of Georgia Press, 2007. Reprinted with permission.

Look at you, sitting there being good.
After two years you're still dying for a cigarette.
And not drinking on weekdays, who thought that one up?
Don't you want to run to the corner right now
for a fifth of vodka and have it with cranberry juice
and a nice lemon slice, wouldn't the backyard
that you're so sick of staring out into
look better then, the tidy yard your landlord tends
day and night — the fence with its fresh coat of paint,
the ash-free barbeque, the patio swept clean of small twigs—
don't you want to mess it all up, to roll around
like a dog in his flowerbeds? Aren't you a dog anyway,
always groveling for love and begging to be petted?
You ought to get into the garbage and lick the insides
of the cans, the greasy wrappers, the picked-over bones,
you ought to drive your snout into the coffee grounds.
Ah, coffee! Why not gulp some down with four cigarettes
and then blast naked into the streets, and leap on the first
beautiful man you find? The words ruin me, haven't they
been jailed in your throat for forty years, isn't it time
you set them loose in slutty dresses and torn fishnets
to totter around in five-inch heels and slutty mascara?
Sure it's time. You've rolled over long enough.
Forty, forty-one. At the end of all this
there's one lousy biscuit, and it tastes like dirt.
So get going. Listen: they're howling for you now:
up and down the block your neighbors' dogs
burst into frenzied barking and won't shut up.

by Kim Addonizio

"Good Girl" from Tell Me. © American Poet Continuum. Reprinted with permission.

Before the gates opened, before popcorn
and cotton candy drifted down throats

like sweet and salty summer evenings
of childhood, before the townspeople

confessed to the music and lights,
the Ferris wheel baskets swung empty

in a slow arc, one by one, offering color
to the sky — red, yellow, orange, blue.

Just roving boys, what else could we do
but follow the sandaled feet of girls

out to the fair to buy them rides
until our pockets turned up penniless,

until we lost them in the dark
the way sparrows will fly from you,

until our last walk past the fun house
mirrors stretched our bodies like gum,

when we caught ourselves looking
back at ourselves for the first time.

by Hank Hudepohl

"The Fair" by Hank Hudepohl, from The Journey of Hands. © Word Press, 2007. Reprinted with permission.