Poems From Oklahoma - 3. Set 3 - Three Poems

OKLAHOMA PRAIRIE

Oklahoma prairie in late winter
tall grass holds shades
of amber, rose, gray-green,

and flows around tangled
islands of blackberry thickets
where rabbits hide from red tailed hawks.

Bright air pushes its cold finger
down the collar of my shirt
to find the sweat collected there.

As I step high through dry grass,
a covey of quail explodes under my feet
leaving me smiling and slightly disoriented

A row of sandstone blocks
tells a farm was here.
The chute to a cattle pen

rises up out of the sea of grass,
a silver wedge with surface weathered
into the lines and ridges of a contour map.

It stands as a sparse monument
to those who were here before
depression wind blew westward.

Their passing left few marks, but soon
old homesteads will reveal themselves
as clumps of iris in the spring.

SAD OLD LOVE SONGS

All those old love songs
they keep playing on the radio.
All the mournful ones
about My Baby Done Left Me,
She Don't Love Me Anymore,
I'm All Alone Now,
all that sad stuff.

Why do they keep playing
all those songs?
They play them for me.
They're all crap
unless they're for you.
Then they are the saddest
truest things in the world.

All those sad old love songs.
They know just how I feel.

NOT GUILTY

Herein lies the pilfered light,
the lies that someone told.
What gives them the willful right
if I may be so bold
to tell those things that are untrue
to state a view that’s so askew
I’m placed out in the cold.

No matter that her yellow hair
was tangled and awry,
I think some other fellow there
did dangle on her thigh.
It was not I who bit her lip
or placed my hand upon her hip
and made the lady cry.

For I am but a modest man,
in fact I’m just a lad.
I could not cast the oddest plan
to act as such a cad.
It was not I who stole a kiss
or laid her down to roll in bliss,
I only wish I had.