In memory of Clemens Starck, 1937-2024

Who can say the old way’s dead and gone,
these days when who says anything for sure?
Feet dangling out the boxcar’s toothless maw
here sit a couple throwbacks drinking in the view,
snaking through the Siskiyous this balmy afternoon.
 
Both have beards, and both have scraggly hair.
In the air there is a touch of spring. One with
his Red Sox ballcap screwed down tight could be
the ghost of Clem Starck on a ramble,
heading east and south, a free ride caught
to look for work, really a footloose excuse,
a lark and nothing more. But here they sit,
their boots laced up, their knapsacks full of apples,
socks, potatoes, and a couple cans of beans.
One tells the other Siskiyou is Chinook slang
for a bob-tailed horse. We know who that must be.
On this four percent grade the engine labors,
and along for the ride climbing slow they take
a while to pass. As they are turned about to go
into the dark again they think to wave at us.


Paul Hunter

Paul Hunter is a Seattle poet who has won the Washington State Book Award for his farming poems, and is currently working on a series of contemporary cowboy novels that wrestle with how we might savor nature more fully and accommodate ourselves to climate change. The first cowhand book won a Will Rogers Medallion. His last book was Untaming the Valley, and the next to appear soon in 2025 is Desert Crossing.