John Barnard

I am sitting in my favorite coffee shop staring at the gusty Northwester picking up a paper bag, swirling it upward and dropkicking it to the other side of the road. Summer is setting in fast here in the Middle…

I woke up feeling worn out and still tired this morning. Wild, vivid dreams came to me in salvos in the early morning hours and when I finally fell asleep I slipped into one of those “slumbers of the dead”…

The Westerner

“ My Fathers sleep on the sunrise plains, and each one sleeps alone

  Their Trails may dim to the grass and rains, for I choose to make my own

  I lay proud claim to their blood and name…

Call me “ Lucky “ - Musings from the Road

A rusty, ice covered Chevy stood idling in the sleet of the farmyard parking lot. Cloud cover formed a blinding white dome over the late November Wisconsin landscape and very…

“Jim Harrison said that leaving is a kind of dying, and I find I have a great deal of practice. It makes a strange awareness of the provisional nature of existence knowing and seeing things clearly only in approach and…

“ The dogs were barking as the cars were parking, the loan sharks were sharking and the narcs were narcing. Practically everyone was there.
In the parking lot by the forest preserve the police had found two bodies in the…

“ My good friends speak, like they did last year
And last years just a blur, through my head full of beer.
Where’s your wisdom, put that broken bottle down
Let the wind in your sails take you out of…

“ Damn, damn, damn, Ol’ Death is a Buzzard that swoops down upon us from time to time.
  Fortunately I believe our spirits will transcend Earthly Mud, sailing around the stars on a paper airplane.”
            Joe Ely - Bonfire of…

“ No more walks in the wood,
   this is the aftermath, of afternoons      in the clover fields
Where we once made love, then wandered home together
Where the trees arched above and branches were the sky
Now they are gone…