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December 4, 2020 Poetry

Three Poems

Jack Buck

Three Poems photo

                       words to describe love

saw a pretty plant through a store window
                                                                    picked out a different one instead
that way other people would stop
                                                                    and think about getting a plant
for their loved one too
                                                                   when they were to walk by similar to me
downtown in the snow
                                                                   bypassing the sidewalks
leaving leaping footprints across a field
                                                                  back to our apartment overlooking a park
friends ask if I feel any different
                                                                 now that I’m married
like are there any significant realizations
                                                                 or changes to be on the lookout for
and how do you truly know
                                                                 if you’re really in love
now jogging out of breath
                                                                now speed walking with that plant
now running back home

 

                              Denver 2010

should’ve learned how to properly cut open a fish instead of drinking like an opened mouth
rainbow trout in between paychecks with no money stretching out the leftover $100 after rent
walking around is free to do in 95 degree heat say your prayers during the day for a couple bucks
at one in the afternoon you can sit in the outfield bleachers and sweat out a beer afterwards throw yourself in the river float out west don’t resist go where it goes to the foothills get out and hike up that mountain ahead of you stay up there for the night or catch a ride back to town and see what everyone else is up to tonight under a lit sky in the park rolling around while someone yells out their poetry while howling at the moon wake up tomorrow morning making it out alive one of these days I’ll need to get to doing something different

 

                               salmon run

where salmon run wild we are river water/ where salmon doesn’t get any better in the good way/
over 100 pounds of productive salmon water inside us are tributaries/ based on nationality, color
of skin, and your economic output you either get to purchase the lots along the waterfront or you
are massacred by commercial mining projects who fish to death from fish dam ladders/ although
as much as they try to destroy us we keep finding ways to come back with cultivation and
expansion of natural abundance/ if we can keep the wild salmon and freshwater in community/
all indicators of disconnect/ the leaves on the tree and the animal we are/ are sustained by the
giving of the 110 pound salmon who ate its own weight over and over again just to sacrifice their
own life/ they go out there and kill every last one like a machine in a real american horror
docuseries/ how will we ever survive given a prescribed way of behaving/ our capacity for self
renewal/ creating weather patterns / for processes too smart and holy for them to ever understand and sell/ regeneration of consciousness/ we know there’s more war coming/ despite being just salmon poets we too know of other things about life than just poems/ an effort to reproduce the river’s flow/ treading on a trajectory of extinction from a once river ideal/ sometimes profit revenue industry translates into opposing revolutionary action that is more important long term than anyone can understand/ am I a fish painted in that mural on the corner of 22nd and larimer street at the last free unused parking lot in denver/ or am I the thought of once being a fish seeking and gliding in and out of casted shadow on a wild river with hope cascading through me/ what about you/ are you a regional lending water system in ecological agreement running on the local ticket of the importance of biodiversity/ if so I would vote for you 

image: Aaron Burch


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