FOLK COLLECTION 11: The Skaggs Foundation Cowboy Poetry Collection
29769 results found for "No Search Criteria Set"Book Title
Composer
Call #
Pages
Author
Poem Title
First Lines
Keywords
May Darkness Restore
Sean Sexton
FOLK COLL 11 S-74
71
Sean Sexton
Stepping between the Strands
The fence catches and rips my shirt. My pants are tattered and worn, seams unraveling, mud oozing into my boots.
fence, clothing, nature
May Darkness Restore
Sean Sexton
FOLK COLL 11 S-74
72
Sean Sexton
Descent
She has her father's hands, small and delicate on him, and ears of the old man made in pearly skin.
hands, family, body
May Darkness Restore
Sean Sexton
FOLK COLL 11 S-74
73
Sean Sexton
Dealing with a Fire-Breathing Dragon
She understands space and gives you none, arriving at the gate in brindled fury, calf at her feet, caught and pulled up to tag.
bull, anger, cow
May Darkness Restore
Sean Sexton
FOLK COLL 11 S-74
74
Sean Sexton
Fence
The strand we take down in old, barely lithe enough for coiling into crumbled hoops for gather.
fence, wire, coil
May Darkness Restore
Sean Sexton
FOLK COLL 11 S-74
75
Sean Sexton
Scraping an Old Palette
I take down from the wall and scrape an ancient palette; twenty-five years of paintings launched from this encrusted, mildewed slab. A hillside of white lead, cadmium and titanium heaped like the banks of a river bed, molder along its outer edge.
paint, art, aging
May Darkness Restore
Sean Sexton
FOLK COLL 11 S-74
77
Sean Sexton
Elsewhere
Suddenly, you turn a corner and shining off a green lawn, beneath vivid sky - an elsewhere
lawn, location, dreams
May Darkness Restore
Sean Sexton
FOLK COLL 11 S-74
78
Sean Sexton
Vision
Suddenly you arrive at an intersection, lights red, traffic frozen and in an instant recognize disaster, remember its bland face, as that sick feeling climbs inside and you watch again how the world works.
duck, hatchlings, standing
May Darkness Restore
Sean Sexton
FOLK COLL 11 S-74
79
Sean Sexton
Early Morning Sunrise
That awkward hour, the beautiful was loose, and night's elegy given by morning with garlands of clouds gilt in the distance and he - present, coffee-eyed, watching.
sunrise, sky, color
May Darkness Restore
Sean Sexton
FOLK COLL 11 S-74
80
Sean Sexton
Mother Lode
His words to her were lovely enough to steal, and thus he was taken before their love had fledged. She came to Florida, met our father, began our family. She kept his letters in two binders we found the summer after she passed. Now everything revealed on her ninetieth birthday, missed.
pilot, navy, marriage
May Darkness Restore
Sean Sexton
FOLK COLL 11 S-74
82
Sean Sexton
After Wang Wei
No old friends in these mountains where emptiness begets silence. What brightens mosses in the deeps lays eternal blue shadows on the peaks.
mountains, peaks, shadows
May Darkness Restore
Sean Sexton
FOLK COLL 11 S-74
87
Sean Sexton
Stay
Stay, bright sky, blue as the spiderwort's lease in excess light among the cousined weeds, the wheedled growth of well-drained lands by lanes to the bluff overlooking cerulean -
sky, poet, nature
May Darkness Restore
Sean Sexton
FOLK COLL 11 S-74
88
Sean Sexton
Day's Work
After he was brought into his room, we split a cowboy shirt down the back, eased his bruised arms through the sleeves, and he assumed the appearance of a sleepy rancher, taking his noon nap.
work, nap, death
May Darkness Restore
Sean Sexton
FOLK COLL 11 S-74
89
Sean Sexton
Legions
You were hidden from me before this day and now a decree: I have lost my father- comes to my lips and legions become visible.
sorrow, death, hidden
May Darkness Restore
Sean Sexton
FOLK COLL 11 S-74
90
Sean Sexton
Shirts
And now I come to wear your clothes, shirts that no longer fit, you barely wore in the end arranged in piles to divide and sort, of three sizes - which was the measure of you?
clothing, style, design
May Darkness Restore
Sean Sexton
FOLK COLL 11 S-74
91
Sean Sexton
Three Dried Lemons
In late morning, the artist is home alone. Three dried lemons float upon light in a shallow pan set near a window.
lemon, cooking, art
May Darkness Restore
Sean Sexton
FOLK COLL 11 S-74
92
Sean Sexton
In the Hospital
Your mother's become belligerent, was the hospital's call. The care facility sent her by ambulance after she fell in the dinner hall.
hospital, craze, old age
May Darkness Restore
Sean Sexton
FOLK COLL 11 S-74
93
Sean Sexton
May Darkness Restore
May darkness restore pur youth to these hands. Life has kept our love in arrears- time will take us to faraway lands.
love, aging, growth
May Darkness Restore
Sean Sexton
FOLK COLL 11 S-74
94
Sean Sexton
To Love a Woman
I've held you, know the feel of your shoulders, cant of your hips, coverings dressing your bones, how they fit the hand - hard angles done over long ago in flesh,
love, acceptance, marriage
May Darkness Restore
Sean Sexton
FOLK COLL 11 S-74
97
Sean Sexton
Questions
What is the prerogative of the dying? Denial, reticence, anger, grace?
life, philosophy, questions
May Darkness Restore
Sean Sexton
FOLK COLL 11 S-74
98
Sean Sexton
Uses of Lie and Lay and the 5:30AM Friday Morning Incident
The heifer was lying with a broken back when we found her. We shot and dragged her off the road and laid her in the pasture.
lying, car, accident, death
May Darkness Restore
Sean Sexton
FOLK COLL 11 S-74
99
Sean Sexton
The Way
Give yourself to mouths that eat, the slash of claws and grasp of teeth. Let every harm come to pass, sleep beneath treading feet.
unity, food, earth
May Darkness Restore
Sean Sexton
FOLK COLL 11 S-74
100
Sean Sexton
The Ugly Bull
We had to castrate a large black Brahman-cross bull calf born out of season - he was the epitome of ugliness, too much ear, overgrown, wild, wrong in time and place, the result of an unplanned liaison between his Brahman mother and a cull bull that broke through the fence.
castration, shock, mercy
May Darkness Restore
Sean Sexton
FOLK COLL 11 S-74
101
Sean Sexton
Bonnie's Poem
No one has ever written a poem for me, She said, not none word for all my meanderings outside the country of love.
love, poem, heart
May Darkness Restore
Sean Sexton
FOLK COLL 11 S-74
102
Sean Sexton
The Last Load
Alton stands by the gate at dusk, the last load of bees on the truck, and Otis is on the forklift pulling the little trailer free from a soft place in the pasture.
bees, death, divorce
May Darkness Restore
Sean Sexton
FOLK COLL 11 S-74
106
Sean Sexton
Anniversary
No matter we drew the curtains - the waking breeze opens and folds them like the sea,
age, marriage, anniversary