Prison Years

Elegy for a Cowboy

for Bill Blake

The December Death Certificate records AMI: acute myocardial infarction, heart attack

The final rend in a heart that broke three months ago,
The sunny October morning you rode out in the roundup on the gelded roan, your favorite,
To gather cow-calf pairs from the cheat grass grange to winter on alfalfa hay and silage
Like every October for what could have been forever.
I see you cross the crumbling limestone hillside: you trust the roan’s sure-footedness, he trusts you to pick the path.
But that October morning all the contracts failed
And in a slide of rotten rock, a tumble of man and beast
Topsy-turvy he rode you down the hill to rest at bottom;
I imagine a flail of legs and wheezing neighs and try-and-try again to rise until exhaustion and then finally death would quiet him.
Eight hours later, rosy grey dusk,
The rescue party turned you up to load you in an ambulance and record

Lacerations, contusions, and five broken ribs.

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About Katherine Power

I didn’t set out to be a terrorist. As a student activist, I moved from protesting the war in Viet Nam to waging guerrilla war to overthrow the government….

Recent and Upcoming Appearances & Publications
3/12/19 Peace, Justice and Transformation, Parallel Conference to the UN Commission on the Status of Women, 777 United Nations Plaza, NYC
11/13/18 A Journey from Guerrilla to Grandmother, Lifelong Learners: An Independent Collaborative, Temple Shir Tikva, 141 Boston Post Road, Wayland, MA 01778
10/10/18 Provincetown Women’s Week Reading from Doing Time:Papers from Framingham Prison, AMP, 432 Commercial Street, Provincetown, MA
4/6-9/2018 The Nature of Change, Radical Imagination Conference, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR
1/15/2014 Complexity and Social Change, Occupy Radio
10/31/2013 Surrender, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR
10/25/2013 Surrender, Taos Community Theater, Taos, NM

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