Storyteller of the Week

John Hicks

 

 Photo of John Hicks his wife Tolly took on their honeymoon in 1971 on Penang Island.

John Hicks took a poetry class in 2007 at The Loft in Minneapolis and began writing while working as a business systems analyst.  

He continued writing in Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, and Connecticut while contracting on computer projects in insurance, brokerage, manufacturing, banking, and agriculture.  
His poems have been published in journals and anthologies like Constellations, Global Poemic, South Florida Poetry Journal, Panorama Journal, First Literary Review – East, Sheila-Na-Gig, San Pedro River Review, Shark Reef, Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Bangor Literary Journal, Noctua Review, Poetica Review, Verse Virtual, and Wild Word.  

He’s been nominated for a Pushcart and Best of the Net.  

To celebrate retirement in 2016, he completed a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska – Omaha.  

John and Tolly celebrated their 50th anniversary at home during the pandemic.  Their daughter, currently developing his web site, lives in Texas.  

He’s working on two poetry manuscripts in the thin mountain air of New Mexico’s southern Rockies.  

Sunrises and sunsets can be great here.  We celebrate every one of them, John says.

He is a veteran of the Vietnam War.

Comments by Editor Sharon Waller Knutson

John Hicks poetry is so cinematic and photographic that I feel I am watching a movie or reading a mini novel. He has a signature style stamped on every poem as he tells the story of his life.

I’m proud to publish these strong stellar storyteller poems that show who John is as a person.


A Minute at Midnight

New Year’s hoopla on the screen irritates me.  
Flashing lights, staged countdown, champagne,
cheers, breathless celebrities introducing each other
while announcers interrupt to remind us
of the nearness of the big moment.  

I’m out back.  
Sand here is coarse; grits beneath my feet.  
Not enough light to glitter the mica in it.  
Above the mesa, the full moon
hangs an antique medallion in a velvet case.  
It pours silver light onto juniper and pinon.  

Something small rasps across a dry yucca leaf—
its moving away acknowledges my presence.  

To the east, across the arroyo, an adobe shack still
has Christmas lights swagging its porch eaves:
big garish things I remember people draping
on outdoor trees to make them stand out.  
We had lights like that when I was a boy—
their metal branch clips kept getting lost
year-to-year.  Farmers in Olivenhain Valley

used them on the giant tree they set up
in the old German meeting hall.  We went
to see it once on Christmas eve.  The place
smelled of pine.  Everyone sang carols,
our voices disappearing into the dark rafters.  
Their children did the manger scene.  

Santa visited, too.  Gifts for all the children.  
Got my first pocket knife.  

Both my grandfathers carried one.  Useful
for cutting string, opening packages,
slicing an apple—grandfather things.  
Now, it’s where my jeans wear through.  

This sky’s so clear, it’s like a blanket
tucking us in among these ridges.  
The sort of night when growing up,
I could sleep outdoors, my body
under a shelter half that captured dew
while I looked up at the stars.  

Beyond the shack, a car disturbs a coyote.  
On a windless night like this,
dust will hang in the air after the car.  
The coyote lifts a thin, wavering cry
like a young dog wanting to be let in.  
Others nearby sing to it,
letting it know where they are.  

Tonight,
nothing in that other world knows where I am.

 
Silence Is Different Here

When you arrived, you said,
Silence is different here.  
Not like my apartment.

When you arrived, we went into the garden;
listened to a sagebrush lizard turning over gravel
seeking bugs in the shade of the desert willow.  
The rocks made small clicking sounds.

Cities I’ve abandoned layer their days dull with noise: swell out
at night for the deli owner testing his door when he locks up;
for the saxophone player practicing in a doorway two blocks down; 

and for couples spilling onto the street from Gatsby’s.

But here, sound is horizontal.  Like wind sloping up
from the Ojo del Orno—giving voice to each juniper and piñon
as it reaches them; like thunder counting the seconds after lightning
leaps between clouds grumbling among the mesas.  Yet midday,

with this heat rising from the sand, we have only the air whispering
over the wings of the crow, mingling with its feathering.  

No visit to New Mexico would be complete
without a sunrise.  This morning we’re listening
to night shifting from black and white to deepest blue,  

then pink as it tops the large juniper, turning us
to seek the sweet spot where today will emerge.  

And to a horse whinny to the north.  Closer,
the one note of a Townsend’s Solitaire repeats,
like a wheel turning over a dry spot.  And a car

on the ridge road in slow pursuit of headlights,
its tires muttering apologies to the gravel.  

When light finds the ridge, coyotes start up.  One
gives a hoarse bark, another a series of yips
that prompt high-pitched yowls from still more.  

We live within our hearing;
its taste of everyday.

 
Distances

Hear that?  There it is again. That’s a dove.
It’s saying, “I’m here.  Where are you?”  
And down there, across the creek bed:  
Hear the response?  

Your mom called this morning.
You were asleep.  Told her
you’re doing OK.

Sometimes wonder if the Pueblo folks
used to come up here for the wild horses.  
Did you see the hoofprints back there?  
Easy to spot when sun’s this low.  

She didn’t like it here.  Said
nothing ever happened.  Wanted
to be back in Chicago.  

Cities give some folks a major high.  But
you’ve got to stay there for it.  Get away a bit—
get it out of your face—you can find
your spirit’s own pace.  It’s always there.  

Those clouds out there beyond the Rio Grande—
like cotton balls spilled out on a glass table?
Distance isn’t the same when you see so much.
I like how they bring the sky down.  It’s like
you can touch it.  

That big juniper by your bedroom window?
Come October you should see it.  
Flickers and robins go crazy
riding up and down on the branch tips
going for its berries.  Can you remember
planting it?  You were three.  
Left not long after.  
I think about you when I look at it.  

Your mom said you’ve a full summer lined up.  

Call, won’t you?


New High Desert Encounter

Eventually, the deer, turkeys and raccoons got accustomed to me,
started slipping out of the trees and high grass, up to the porch
to take corn and bits of fruit, or to drink from the birdbath, sometimes
just to see what I was doing sitting in my chair with my book and coffee.  

Might have been the bribes that kept them coming back—
but there was that doe one late spring, that gave birth to twins outside the kitchen.  
I called her “Bright Eyes,” and every year after that she brought her fawns
for me to see, then bedded them down among the wildflowers pouring
blue, purple and yellow down the hillside while she went to browse.  
Morning sun slipping up behind the little ones lit their ears in the foliage—
pink antennas listening for her return.  

It was hard, very hard to sell that place
to exchange it for this high desert.  The few trees
crouch so far apart here, you can easily see the mesas
across the Rio Grande, laid out like foundations
abandoned by ancient gods.  These trees shelter a few birds,
but mostly just clutch the sand, hunkering over it
to protect their water rights.  Even cactus struggles
up here.  I’d heard about wild horses, but never saw
more than a few light-bronze droppings and wind-sifted tracks
on the trail down into the arroyo.

But this morning, as I set my book on the counter
and raise the kitchen blinds, a bay mare is looking back
from outside the garden wall.  Motionless as a guilty child,
there’s dirt on her back like winter frost.  
As I rinse the coffee pot, another mare
comes from behind a large juniper.  Side by side,
they stare as I fumble paper filters with glances
to see what they are doing.  From a stand of cedars

at the bottom of the ridge, a pinto with  black and white and
coffee-colored markings trots in. There’s a low spot
in the earth, and she lays down in it for a dust bath.  
When she stops and rests, a gray bends down
and lays a foreleg across her back—which gets her up.  

A brown yearling with a punk mane joins the band.  
I’m thinking of taking my coffee out on the porch
but, as I’m spooning the grounds, a stallion appears.
White and muscular, with floor-length tail,
he stands apart, ears scanning.  His sides rise and fall
as his nostrils flare.  I decide to watch.

The bath must be irresistible.  Another mare
lays down in the same spot, rolls in the dirt.  
One after another paws a little mound,
flops down on it. At one time

there are three mares and the yearling
squirming on their backs, hooves up,
hind legs spasmodically kicking
like a small dog’s when you reach
its ever-so-needful spot.  The dust
that drifts around them nearly submerges
the yearling.  It’s like mist on a morning pond.  
As I add the water and switch on, they shake off
a brown fog.      

It’s the stallion’s turn.  He scrapes at the earth.
then kneels, first the left foreleg, then the right,
and as he lowers his hind legs, he is close,
so close to a prickly pear cactus.  I hold my breath.
He rolls onto his left side, then his right—cringingly close.  
Coffeemaker beeps; I ignore it.  It’s remarkable
how such a large body, even when off its feet,
can be so precisely aware of the space it occupies.  
One more flip, and he’s up.  Shakes off.  

Unable to look away, I fumble for my mug.  The stallion
turns toward one of the bays and, with no visible signal,
she starts down the trail into the arroyo.  The band follows
in single-file, the pinto running to catch up—
dust streaming from her back.

 
Navajo

She was a child, not much older than I,
facing the sheep she was herding
across this dirt road.  Outdoor work
crusted on her shoulders.  I watched

from the back seat, a green steel oasis
with an art deco Pontiac hood ornament.  
We’d come to this remote part of Arizona,
to see spring wild flowers: lupine, ocotillo,
paint brush.  She must have seen us coming,

pulling a rooster red cloud of dust
across a distant rise, long before the tires
crunched to a halt on the decomposed granite
roadway as the flock flowed up a dry wash
and across our path.  She stood in the center

of the road, shielding her charges
with her body.  Hands and arms extended,
as if conducting the crossing:  right to left,
two fingers extended and thrusting, right to left;
lips pulled back, snapping out the whistle—
two-toned, urgent—keeping them moving,
right to left.  Already the leaders

were climbing out of the wash, as ahead of them
the last of another flock left a muddy waterhole—
a reddish-brown soup cupped in the sand-drifted slope
of an ancient ridge, its stark bones compressing late sunlight
into shadows between upright plates.  The remaining
water was desperate; not even the sky touched it.   

She turned and looked at us.  

A light blue sweater and an adult’s denim jacket,
sleeves rolled to her wrists, covered a dress
too long for her.  Black braids swung
from a shapeless hat.  Dad turned off the engine,
revealing the delicate rumble of hooves
as he stepped out to talk.  
She spoke no English; Spanish then.  

He and his dog pushed us away to get to the water first,  

She pointed with a lift of her chin toward the adult herder
slanting down the far side of the ridge.  

Now the water is all muddy for us.   

Dad took our thermos of ice water from the front seat
and poured her a drink in its chrome cup.  She sipped
and we looked away; looked at the flock.  
Stepping toward it, she raised a hand
as if to summon the bleak hill in the road beyond,  
called out, and an even younger girl
stepped from behind a sage, handmade doll
clutched to her chest.  

May I give her some?  

The little one started--surprised at the cold water.  They stood
face to face, passing the cup between them, black eyes
communing.  When the little one tilted her head to look at us
over the cup, her dark eyes seemed to seep into its chrome curve.  

Dad offered more but, measuring the thermos with her eyes
and seeing the four of us, the older one declined.  As the last lamb
crossed, little cartoon puffs of dust popping from its heels,
the road emerged.  She said their thanks and ran to her flock.  

We drove on in silence;
a middle-class family
seeing America by car.  
 
Publishing Credits:

“A Minute at Midnight” and “Silence Is Different Here” – Sheila-Na-Gig

“Distances” – Santa Fe Literary Review

“High Desert Encounter” – River City Poetry

“Navajo” – Panorama Journal