Email walt.mcdonald@ttu.edu
© Walt McDonald, 2006
Updated 8/30/06
A Few of Walt's Poems
"Crossing the Road"
by Walt McDonald
What's a boy to do, both shoes caught in the tar,
the road past our house turning to street,
and me, a chicken trying to reach the other side.
Men burly as uncles swore and shook their shovels,
laughing. My mother waited on the porch,
drying her hands in her apron. My big sister teased,
her gawky girlfriends howled, and someone screamed
Tar baby! I swear I tugged, cursing the only words
I had learned, squashed down in July asphalt
like a bug, like Captain Marvel in the comics
turned into a tree, unable to budge. And of all days,
on my birthday. Carl would see me soon, and Mary Jane,
all kids I knew pointing on the curb and dancing.
Like God roaring up on his motorcycle, my brother
dismounted and stared. Tucking a Camel in his lips,
he lit and flipped the match away, came strolling down,
fists doubled, snorting smoke, not smiling.
Massive, towering above me, he jerked me up
without my shoes and hauled me like a sack of oats
back to the grass, his own boots ruined.
I remember him that way, not the box of belongings
they brought from Okinawa, not the flag Mother hung
in the window for all cars to see speeding past
the four-lane street, pounding my sneakers down.
from Blessings the Body Gave
Copyright © 1998 by Walt McDonald,
Ohio State University Press.
Used by permission of Ohio State University Press.
"One Morning between Wars"
by Walt McDonald
The girl in the purple robe
tangled like a bath towel
lolls on the couch and laughs,
some pre-school song or clown trick
bouncing in her mind. Will she
years from now recall this Sunday morning
on the coast, up before Mommy
and her brothers, the lazy, purring world
all to herself? Will she remember
this hour of lounging, twisting
turning, and humming, her daddy
bringing breakfast on a tray,
the brittle bacon, the tiny tub of syrup,
hot strips of sweet French toast?
Will she miss the months he wasn't home,
the TV chant of Desert Storm
that grown-ups found exciting? He's back,
and now she lolls and rolls the bacon
on her lips, and nibbles, dips the toast
and dribbles sticky syrup on her tongue.
Her own real daddy brings
more bacon strips. He says she makes him
happy when she eats so well. Twisting
bacon like a rotor blade, she sings
about her daddy days ago, descending
from the sky like Santa Claus,
leaves blowing everywhere,
the whole crowd waving at her daddy's
helicopter, a real, brave daddy
finally back. She sniffs the bacon,
lips it, sucks it like a lollypop
and hums, God up in heaven,
her daddy close enough to hear her
when she calls, another strip
of French toast in her bowl.
from All Occasions
Copyright © 2000
by University of Notre Dame Press.
Used by permission.
"In the Alchemist's Household"
by Walt McDonald
Burning coal for gold, my wife
waves our big-eyed children
back from the kiln. Moths
fluttering from joy to joy,
they bob and weave as if she's
a goalie; her studio, a soccer field.
I've seen her spin exquisite vases
from clay, jars of the same sienna sand
we live on. In months, she turned
mere kisses into screams
and tiny fists, squinty infants
who turned her breast milk
into teeth and giggles, into fists
that lifted puppies up and snuggled.
She makes sand paintings
I want to frame and save,
grains of a prairie rainbow
she sweeps at sundown and scatters.
She turns long nights to dawn
by bedsides of the dying,
moans and groaning that hush
when she's beside them in a chair,
stroking their twitching thumbs,
holding their IV hands.
from All Occasions
Copyright © 2000
by University of Notre Dame Press.
Used by permission.
"Nights on the Porch Swing"
by Walt McDonald
I see from my wife's green eyes
we're not alone. Our stock tank
shimmers in moonlight. Whatever warns her
makes her squeeze my neck--a whiff of fear,
a riffle of feathers. Owls own the night,
round eyes thrust downward. I've seen her
rescue five baby ducks a day, a night-light on
for ducks waddling spoiled in the washroom.
Rocking, I talk of hunger,
the natural curve of talons. Hush,
she warns me. Her body knows the rhythms
of the moon, expects owls most nights
and ignores them. But tonight, her fingers
strum the short hairs of my neck.
We hear a scream squeezed out by talons.
I shove the porch swing higher with my boots,
but her moccasins stop us,
dragging the swing off balance. Hush,
she says, her nails in my flesh.
She tugs my beard and squeezes,
her fingers stroking, stroking my neck.
"Nights on the Porch Swing" is from
Counting Survivors, by Walter McDonald,
© 1995. All rights are controlled by
the University
of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15261.
Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.
"Rembrandt and the Art of Mercy"
by Walt McDonald
They say the luster of gold addicted him
to fat, round guilders' purses.
They claim his florid nose exposed
a painter's lust, that even the scent of stiff,
splayed bristles glazed with oils aroused him,
and skin like honey on the tongue
provoked him, made him pose models sweating
till they wept. They claim he painted haunted faces,
that nothing glistens but their hats and helmets. Yes,
what he loved and pitied most was flesh
that's caught but never saved by canvas. Consider
his florid elders astounded by Susanna bathing,
his naked Danaë with her god of gold. Behold
the fragile, eggshell flesh of sad Bathsheba,
her toes and thighs scrubbed slowly
for a king. If only he could capture those
in ocher, rub her troubled eyes so they could see.
Notice the gold, pig-bristle swirls that touched
his dying Saskia's neck, her honey lobes,
the sweaty radiance of her breasts.
"Rembrandt and the Art of Mercy" is from
Counting Survivors, by Walter McDonald,
© 1995. All rights are controlled by
the University
of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15261.
Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.
"Leaving the Scene"
by
Walt McDonald
Sleet clicking in the trees, and finches flicking
maize and millet from the feeder. This late in spring,
and still the thin smoke whips from chimneys
a mile away. We rock and watch the dawn,
a ten-watt bulb beyond the clouds. Is all
this sideshow spring a barker's promise of warmth?
Our pears bloomed weeks ago, awnings of green
chiffon. The red oaks bulge, about to burst. Sleet
clicks like thousands of clocks ticking in our sleep.
We take turns leaving the scene with both mugs
to the kitchen for more, draining the urn,
the stiff steam bending as we straighten rugs
and weave back through forty years of furniture,
drapes opened, sleet beating a mute tattoo,
the old oaks wet and dark out to the pasture,
sleet on the steers' flat backs, bowing to dawn
and browsing, always grass and blocks of salt,
the sky nothing they ever watch, no matter what falls,
nothing fat cattle can't endure. We rock
and sip in silence, chairs turned to the porch,
grandchildren far away, knowing whatever force
is coming no one could stop, not even us.
from Blessings the Body Gave
Copyright © 1998 by Walt McDonald,
Ohio State University Press.
Used by permission of Ohio State University Press.
"The Waltz We Were Born For"
by
Walt McDonald
Wind chimes ping and tangle on the patio.
In gusty winds this wild, sparrow hawks hover
and bob, always the crash of indigo
hosannas dangling on strings. My wife ties copper
to turquoise from deserts, and bits of steel
from engines I tear down. She strings them all
like laces of babies' shoes when the squeal
of their play made joyful noise in the hall.
Her voice is more modest than moonlight,
like pearl drops she wears in her lobes.
My hands find the face of my bride.
I stretch her skin smooth and see bone.
Our children bring children to bless her, her face
more weathered than mine. What matters
is timeless, dazzling devotion--not rain,
not Eden gardenias, but cactus in drought,
not just moons of deep sleep, not sunlight or stars,
not the blue, but the darkness beyond.
from Blessings the Body Gave
Copyright © 1998 by Walt McDonald,
Ohio State University Press.
Used by permission of Ohio State University Press.
"Faith Is a Radical Master"
by
Walt McDonald
God bats on the side of the scrubs.
With a clean-up hitter like that, who needs
to worry about stealing home, a double squeeze,
cleat-pounding triples? If nothing else works,
take a walk, lean into the wicked pitch
careening inside at ninety miles an hour.
At bat, just get on base and pray the next nerd
doesn't pop up. When someone's already on, the coach
never calls me Mr. October, seldom signals Hit away.
If Johnson with the wicked curve owns the strike zone
or the ump, I'll bunt. No crack of the bat,
no wildly cheered Bambino everyone loves.
Lay it down the line like the weakest kid in school,
disciple of the sacrifice. Some hour my time will come,
late in the game, and I'm on third, wheezing from the run
from first after a wild pitch, and Crazy Elmore
waving like a windmill by the third-base line.
Hands on my knees, I'll watch the pitcher
lick two fingers, wipe them on his fancy pin stripes
and try to stare me dead. I'll be almost dead,
gasping, wondering how I'll wobble home if someone bunts
or dribbles a slow roller and the coach yells
Go! But there, there in the box is God,
who doesn't pound home plate like an earthquake
but slowly points the bat like the Babe toward center field,
and all my family in the clouds go wild, all friends
I've loved and lost, even the four-eyed scrubs
in the dugout slugging each other and laughing,
tossing their gloves like wild hosannas, and why not--
it's bottom of the ninth, two outs, a run behind
and a hall-of-fame fast baller on the mound,
but I'm on third and leaning home, and look who's up.
from Whatever the Wind Delivers
Copyright © 1999
by Texas Tech University Press.
Whatever the Wind Delivers:
Celebrating West Texas and the Near Southwest received Walt's fourth
Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, and the Natalie
Ornish Poetry Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. The book
has 83 of Walt's new and selected poems, and 83 archival photos selected
by Janet Neugebauer from Texas Tech's Southwest Collection.
To see a larger image of the book's
cover and "The Price They Paid for Range" (the poem matched with that cover
photo), please click the following link:
http://www.ttup.ttu.edu/books/WhateverWind.htm
Climbing the Divide, Walt's nineteenth
collection of poems, was published by the University of Notre Dame Press
in 2003.
To visit the web site of the National
Cowboy Hall of Fame, including descriptions of the Western Heritage Awards,
please click the following link:
http://www.cowboyhalloffame.org/
The main page of the University
of Notre Dame Press is at the following link:
http://www.undpress.nd.edu
To see a larger image of the cover of
Blessings
the Body Gave and another poem (Ohio State University Press, 1998),
please click the following link:
http://www.ohiostatepress.org/f98/Mcdble.htm
To see an image of the cover of Where
Skies Are Not Cloudy and another poem (University of North Texas Press,
1993), please click the following link:
http://www.unt.edu/untpress/titles/mcdonal2.htm
Links