Winter 2001
AN IDAHO MAN SPEAKS OUT ON SWANS
They glide on water and they migrate south
and north, they mate for life, they
whistle when they die. We have no time
for myths in Idaho but take much pride
in being America’s state of mind,
symbol of what the world would like
of course to be most like.
What is it to us that they haul the chariot
of Aphrodite (if once, then always) or that
one of them rapes a beautiful white woman
named Leda (if once, then unceasingly)?
Here in Idaho such art annoys us,
gets in the way of ordinary things that count
like mineral deposits, lumber, cattle, wheat.
A man who writes of swans, or counts them
spiraling out of sight, or dreams of riding them
into another world is not our kind of man.
That kind of man would breach the dams
and drive the rivers from their banks.
That kind of man would bankrupt folks
whose fathers greened the deserts, irrigated,
swept the sagebrush back for beets and spuds.
We don’t resent the whistlers in their place,
in fact have placed some in Sun Valley at the lodge.
The women like them and the kids.
Biography
I’m working on a chapbook I may call “Dancing to ‘Georgia on My Mind.” Georgia (Tiffany) & I are thinking of a book of poems we’ve written in recent years on similar subjects or themes. I’m a frequent contributor of short essays about Idaho to IDAHO Magazine. Georgia & I have recently been reviewing poetry submissions for the South Carolina Review.