When you sell the farm you grew up on
A part of your heart goes with the deed
And you mourn the loss and in bed you toss
For months after the sad closing day Read more
When You Sell the Farm
Category: Poetry
What’s This?
What’s This?
You ask.
Just the best hour field trial course
In all Quaildom Read more
End of the Season
Another season ending
The quail pairing off
Dogs and horses road weary
Handlers and scouts wore out
They’ve been on the road
Since August
Starting up north
Hauling dogs and horses
To new grounds week by week Read more
February Oaks
In February oaks I seek When I am feeling old and weak In groves they lift bare limbs to pray To celebrate a cold clear day Alone they spread strong branches wide In symmetry on every side Winds shake last acorns to the ground By birds and mammals to be found Turkey grouse and bobwhite quail Deer squirrel and mouse on them prevail I will endure oaks say to me Read more
What’s a Field Trial?
When you get asked that
At a cocktail party
Or a Bar-B-Q
You can never explain
No matter how hard you try Read more
What Happened
What happened
This year at the Ames Plantation?
Was it bad birds
Bad weather
Bad feed?
Read more
In Defense of Sharecropping
Since Reconstruction Sharecropping
Has had a bad wrap
Landlords branded ogres
Tenants victims
Read more
Turning Her Loose
You’re at Ames
Finally
You’ve been trying
For years
She won two
Firsts of an hour
To get here
Let ‘em go Read more
The National — As Seen By A Handler
Here we go
Three hours down
Please birds move
Come out of the woods
If you stay put
Where you roosted
In that stick stuff
My dog won’t point you
Read more
Going to Ames
So your dog is qualified
And you’re going to Grand Junction
To run in The National Championship
The one and only
To run on the Ames Plantation
Where for a century and a quarter
The continent’s best bird dog has been yearly crowned
And where bird dog stories true and fiction abound
Read more