SPRING IN THE COUNTRY
And sheep are led to the shearing shed.
They tumble out, shivering, bleeding. What good to tell them,
“look toward the blades, not away.”
—from Rattle #30, Winter 2008
Tribute to Cowboy & Western Poetry
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David Romtvedt: “I’ve always wondered what some of the high modernist poets would make of life in rural Wyoming and so I began to write poems that were take-offs of some of those famous fellows. ‘Spring in the Country’ is from ‘In a Station of the Metro’ by Ezra Pound. But the poet who interested me most was Allen Ginsberg. I think he would have liked it here and we need a Jewish communist gay cowboy in the neighborhood.”
