Axe, Fire, Mule

AXE, FIRE, MULE

The Ozarks

From Milton Rafferty, The Ozarks as a Region: A Geographer’s Description.

OzarksWatch, SMSU Center for Ozarks Studies, vol. 1, no. 4, 1988, p.3.

Axe, Fire, Mule

Poems by

C. D. Albin

Copyright 2018 by C. D. Albin

Cover Image Copyright 2018 by Dawn Surratt

Interior Photographs 2018 by Kelli Jean Albin

National Council of Teachers of English holds the copyrights for the five poems previously published in Teaching English in the Two-Year College: Down- sized; English as a Second Language; Following Mr.  Parks; Sign; and Speech Lessons. Used with permission.

All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be duplicated in any way without the expressed written consent of the publisher, except in the form of brief excerpts or quotations for review purposes.

ISBN: 978-1-936135-59-2

Published by and available at:

Golden Antelope Press

715 E. McPherson

Kirksville, Missouri 63501

Phone: (660) 665-0273

http://www.goldenantelope.com

Email: [email protected]

These poems of struggle, survival, and hard-earned love are as stark and solid as a rocky Ozark hillside.

An impressive rendering of a unique place and the people who inhabit it, told in a language

that is as fresh and inviting as a mountain stream.

—Robert Hamblin, Author of Dogwood Winter and Other Seasons

To Mary Maxine Albin,

my mother,

my exemplar for grace and courage,

faith and resilience.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

OZARK DARK

Here and Now

All Else

Radney’s Tree

Speck of Shine

Searcher

Lament

Parade

The Runner

Stick Pony

Irish Wilderness

MAROONED

Thrown

I Will Send Her Safely Past

Shadow Box

Sinkhole

Blessed Those Days

White as Lime

Allen’s Boy

Nine Days

Glaucoma

Hard of Hearing

AXE, FIRE, MULE

Barn Chore

This Same Field

Intruder

What Drought Has Brought

Burn Ban

Pharaoh Dreamed of Cattle

This Side

Mine

Restoration

White-tail

ROSE OF SHARON

Downsized

English as a Second Language

Speech Lessons

Sign

Following Mr. Parks

Endgame

Revision

At Shiloh

Soldier Home

Old Order

WILL AND TESTAMENT

Cicero Jack, Farmer, Rues the Ruin of an Ozark River

Cicero Jack Considers the Cougar’s Return

Cicero Jack Contemplates the Heart-Stays People

Cicero Jack Ponders Relics of the Osage

Acknowledgements:

ALIVE Magazine: Cicero Jack Ponders Relics of the Osage

Big Muddy: Blessed Those Days; Marooned; White-tail; "Cicero Jack Remembers Tom Cochran’s