Riding the Earthboy 40 Quotes

“And now, here, in these mountains
that hold you from yourself, the wind
blowing down your final face,
you tell us what we know: Time is clean
and brief for girls in a wild time,
past for ladies up like smoke in narrow wind.”
― James Welch, Riding the Earthboy 40

“Gravely

we watched her go the way she came,
unenvied, wild—cold as last spring rain.
Mule deer browsed her garden down
to labored earth, seed and clean carrots.

Dusk is never easy, yet she took it
like her plastic saint, grandly, the day
we cut those morning glories down
and divvied up her odds and ends.

Daughters burned sheets the following Monday.
All over God's city, the high white stars
welcomed her the way she'd planned: a chilly
satellite ringing round the great malicious moon.”
― James Welch, Riding the Earthboy 40

“and this day
like all my days
found me badly in need
of encyclopedias”
― James Welch, Riding the Earthboy 40

“Sleeping weasels robbed
my song of real words.”
― James Welch, Riding the Earthboy 40

“The justice of the prairie hawk
moved me; his wings tipped
the wind just right and the mouse
was any mouse. I came away,
broken from my standing spot,
dizzy with the sense of a world
trying to be right, and the mouse
a part of a wind that stirs the plains.”
― James Welch, Riding the Earthboy 40

“Elephants are whispering in backyards.”
― James Welch, Riding the Earthboy 40

“Say this: say in my mind

I saw your spiders weaving threads
to bandage up the day. And more,
those webs were filled with words
that tumbled meaning into wind.”
― James Welch, Riding the Earthboy 40

“The Man from Washington

The end came easy for most of us.
Packed away in our crude beginnings
in some far corner of a flat world,
we didn’t expect much more
than firewood and buffalo robes
to keep us warm. The man came down,
a slouching dwarf with rainwater eyes,
and spoke to us. He promised
that life would go on as usual,
that treaties would be signed, and everyone—
man, woman and child—would be inoculated
against a world in which we had no part,
a world of money, promise and disease.”
― James Welch, Riding the Earthboy 40

“You don't know I pretend my dumb.”
― James Welch, Riding the Earthboy 40

“Morning and the snow might fall forever.”
― James Welch, Riding the Earthboy 40

“Goodbye, goodbye, Harlem on the rocks,
so bigoted, you forget the latest joke,
so lonely, you'd welcome a battalion of Turks
to rule your women. What you don't know,
what you will never know or want to learn—
Turks aren't white. Turks are olive, unwelcome
alive in any town.”
― James Welch, Riding the Earthboy 40

“Disgusted, busted whites are running
for office in this town.”
― James Welch, Riding the Earthboy 40

“Though wind has shut his ears for good, he squats
for hours at the slough, skipping stones, dreaming
of a moon, the quiet nights and not a quite done
love with a lady high in costly red shoes.”
― James Welch, Riding the Earthboy 40

“Morning brings flood to verbena, planted
by some fool who thinks July forgets
the past.”
― James Welch, Riding the Earthboy 40

“Moon is speaking
woman to the ancient fire. Always woman.”
― James Welch, Riding the Earthboy 40

“Christmas comes like this: Wise men
unhurried, candles bought on credit (poor price
for calves), warriors face down in wine sleep.”
― James Welch, Riding the Earthboy 40

“Those red men you offended were my brothers.
Town drinkers, Buckles Pipe, Star Boy,
Billy Fox, were blood to bison. Albert Heavy Runner
was never civic. You are white and common.”
― James Welch, Riding the Earthboy 40

“I know finicky secrets.”
― James Welch, Riding the Earthboy 40

“When you get there
tell the mad decaying creep
we miss him. We never
meant it.”
― James Welch, Riding the Earthboy 40

“Near Canada, between patches
of spring wheat and tumbleweed,
the horses begin to sing.
Why should I, drunk
as I am, try to understand?”
― James Welch, Riding the Earthboy 40

“There is a moment, I think,
when the eyes speak
and speak of a world too much.
Such a moment, a life.”
― James Welch, Riding the Earthboy 40

“As we turned away,
a woman blue as night
stepped from my bundle,
rubbed her hips and sang
of a country like this far off.”
― James Welch, Riding the Earthboy 40

“Poverty is not the worst thing that can happen to a person. Loss of belief is.”
― James Tate, Riding the Earthboy 40