Rafting the Brazos

Learning the Story of Scars

After the axe-head buried itself

in his ankle, my father clung to the log

he was splitting, squeezing his eyes

like fists. Twelve, he logged those woods

for years with his father--Arkansas,

the great depression, doing whatever they could.

Groaning, he jerked and jerked the axe

like a pump handle, he screamed

and went on pumping until the foot fell back,

hinged by the ankle, white and spurting.

With a bandana he held it and held it

while Arkansas flooded, and saw his father

running, his own axe raised ready to kill

whatever snake slashed the heel of his son.

I learned that scar like a tree

split by lightning, healed over,

knew my father had in him a boy

who had suffered alone in a forest.

"McDonald's evocation of nature and farming is impressively simple, but suggests mystery and depth."--Publisher's Weekly

"McDonald draws upon his personal vision of West Texas . . . offering a strong and sensitive image of the land, its people, its sense of space and struggle."--Books of the Southwest

"We are privy to a consciousness that encompasses Texas from the Gulf to the Caprock, from oxen-slow days to jet lag . . . Rafting the Brazos makes us wish the poet could . . . do nothing but chronicle the spirals of West Texas hawks."--Dallas Morning News

"West Texas, the land and its people, provide both the subject and the soul of McDonald's powerful poetry."--Writers at Work