Ralph

By John I. Blair

Bred in the South Canadian breaks,
Ralph had a friendly, leathery face;
And though he was Scots-Irish to the bone
He looked so much an Indian
I liked to say he was actually
An Arapaho incognito.

With no place of his own to name
Ralph lived by tending others’ farms,
Harvesting crops, feeding cows,
Tilling the fields, minding the seasons;
And his gnarled, brown, wrinkled hands
Knew how to do, to make, to mend.

Sometimes Ralph would tell me tales
About the wild Canadian’s flow,
Quicksands that swallowed herds and crews
Who tried to cross on the cattle trails,
Raging floods that could cartwheel a tree
And knock out the bridge on the MKT.

He could show me prairie dog towns
Or lone coyotes loping down draws,
Drove his truck for miles on rutted roads
Just to talk about redtails perched on poles
Or walk an old hunting camp high on a mound
Where broken arrowheads littered the ground.

I believe in his ninety years Ralph became
One with these hills he loved so well,
One with the soil, the white gypsum, red clay,
One with the rocks, immutable,
One with the river, wide and grand,
One with the beautiful, boundless land.

©2003 John I. Blair