Robert Coats, PhD has over 35 years of experience focusing on the hydrologic and ecological effects of land management on aquatic ecosystems. This work has concentrated in two areas: wetlands and forested watersheds. In both areas, he has drawn on his background in hydrology, ecology, and soil science. His long-term research interests are focused on nitrogen cycling and biogeochemistry at the watershed level.  For a number of years, he has developed a passion for writing poetry.

Gathering Black Walnuts

My father in faded khaki against

the slate November sky, knocking

down wild black walnuts and I

a small bundled boy standing

among brown leaves beneath,

hunting and bagging the pungent globes.

 

Like peasants in the forest

we shoulder our

sacks of acrid treasure,

trudge homeward through 

fading autumn light

to a bright kitchen.

 

On the newspapered floor

we husk them, pounding

each nut through a hole in a board,

tossing them into a wire basket to ripen

and staining our hands yellow-brown.

 

Today as I pruned the high crown

of our backyard walnut

my son came out to watch.

I paused to shift my balance.

He smiled up at me and I

remembered.
 

Maryland Deals with Brown vs. Board of Education

They lived apart in a flimsy war-time

tract on Seven Locks Road.  Their mothers

were our maids, their fathers we saw

fishing for carp in the canal that passed

near the swimming pool I didn’t notice

was for Whites only.

 

Oh, we were hot-shit Korean War fighter pilots

on our Schwinns and J.C. Higgens, until the day

those kids came flying down the hill,

open shirts streaming behind,

guns across their handle bars,

and my mouth filled with cotton as

I fled home.

 

Then the golden rod was blooming

and I met Henry near the brick school

he never knew, and he told me

they were just BB guns

and we talked about starting junior high, how you be lucky

you don’t get Miss Jones for English, all the kids

say she’s mean.

 

Standing around that first day in the big schoolyard

waiting for the bell, nervous as the grownups

but for different reasons,

and it rang and we herded ourselves into the hallways, I

found my homeroom and met Romulus Meekens,

who told me he hopped the freight train

to school and maybe it was true,

maybe it wasn’t, but I was thinking:

I never knew.  Jesus, I just never knew.
 

Mulberry

My father hauled planks of oak

from a peckerwood mill, wood so hard

he had to drill holes for nails

to build us a hide-out in the mulberry

tree with crotches soon polished

to golden-brown by bare feet,

 

a fort with inner-tube strips

nailed in forks to fire rocks

at attacking armies, a room to

play doctor with the girl next door,

her mother always calling her

just when it was getting good.

 

A place to sleep on muggy summer nights,

rise and prowl the deserted streets,

to wake at dawn in the cool

damp-wood smell, to the churk of

robins come to gobble the purple fruit,

to bell-clear liquid notes

of a wood thrush in deep honeysuckle.
 

Reclaiming Axes

Cleaning out the in-laws’ place

I find an axe the old man left out by the woodpile:

blade rusted, edge nicked, handle checked,

eye slightly spread from pounding.

A 36-inch Craftsman with 4 lb. head, like the one

our father taught my brother and me to use.

 

We piled into the jeep, headed

up McGee Creek on a narrow road

known only to sheepherders and prospectors,

tall grass between the ruts.

In an aspen grove, the way blocked by

beaver-felled trunks,

he showed us how to chop.

 

Home in the shop, I sand and oil the handle,

strip rust with emery cloth and naval jelly

grind the blade on a  rumbling

hand-cranked wheel.

 

The wide stance, feet planted, knees flexed,

a full-arc swing that begins

below the waist, your right hand

sliding on the shaft as the head descends.

Shift weight, lean into the stroke

and the blade bites, angling

deep into creamy wood.

Then the back-hand blow that

clears the kerf, sends chips flying.

 

File out the last nick, hone off

the wire edge with oilstone,

tighten the head by setting

the eye-wedge deeper.

 

That was the summer

we camped at the old Rio Tinto mine,

cut poles of cottonwood to pitch our

A-frame tents guyed to pegs we drove

with the side of the blade,

so’s not to spread the eye.

           

At dusk the nighthawks

whirred and zizzed the brittle desert air.
 

Kick the Can

In the days before television,

before moms were fearful, when

oak leaves turned from scarlet

to brown, rattled in the north wind,

It was time.

 

We’d round up the neighbor kids,

fish a can from the garbage

(No. 10 is best), chalk

a circle on the road for base,

set the can at its center.

 

All right feet in a circle, I’d

chant the old quatrain:

            “Engine, engine, number nine

             going down Chicago line

             If the train runs off the track

            do you want your money back?” 

Tapping each sneakered toe in turn.

 

David, Billy or Lex would give

the can a good running kick--

we’d scatter and hide,

leaving IT to retrieve the can,

close eyes and count.

 

I was master of the Long Sneak,

into the woods, along the creek,

circling around three blocks away,

wriggling under fences to reach

my favorite hiding place,

the last kid free.

 

When IT ventured too far

from base, his back to me,

I’d make my move,

the prisoners cheering,

IT yelling “onetwothree on Robert”

 

but I’d beat him to the base,

fetch the can a good kick,

the kids running and screaming,

the can clattering clattering

down the years.
 

Ten Year Old Hero

Me and Eddy were down by the creek, cutting

bamboo spears for a war,

heard a loud crashing in the bushes,

and Eddy goes, “Hey, it’s a horse!”,

but I saw horns and a big gray hump,

and said “that’s no horse, that’s a Brahma bull!”

 

So we lit out for the fallen-tree bridge,

stayed there ‘til we felt safe enough

to run home, tell my mom, who believed us,

and called the sheriff.

 

Cops, cowboys with

pickups and horse trailers

swarmed the neighborhood,

tracked and corralled the beast,

returned him to the rodeo.

 

We got our names in the paper.

Back in school, lunch-time

brown-eyed Jennifer asked me:

“How does it feel to be a hero?”

“Oh”, I said, “it’s no big deal”.