University of Northern Iowa

TreesAuthor(s): Peter WildSource: The North American Review, Vol. 266, No. 3 (Sep., 1981), p. 50Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25124181 .

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PETER WILD

TREES

Often he is bothered by the cleverness of referents, the cowboy caught eyeing the rancher's flat-chested

daughter playing the piano, then building things with his pancakes,

who likes to think he quit before being fired

and loading up his boney horse, sawbuck with a canvas thrown over it,

rides off with his bedroll, his little dog named "Frisky" tied behind the saddle

with a sigh, a chill that lasts all week long into the bromide of the badlands,

there now and then they yap

at a rare bird flying over

with the face of a saint or a terrier,

point at the outline of a fish

in a dry bank dribbling its teeth behind, a beggar once rich

losing his money through a hole in his pocket,

or in the midst of all that sweat and silence

go ooh and ahh over a trove

of petrified wood, wet and sparkling in a wound of the earth, almost fill their saddlebags

with the ancient forest, but jobs

may be had anywhere, and coming out on the other side

he passes up the aguish ranches, instead in town

sells his clothes, sets up shop,

becomes a puppeteer, a jeweler squinting

over what he has found, flattering women,

remembering at last that his ancestors were druids

organizes the first raving symphony orchestra.

50 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW/September 1981

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