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I was interviewing some folks in care centers for a program called Art for Life, sponsored by the North Dakota Council on the Arts.

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And it happened that COVID happened at the same time. So I was doing a phone interview with these four lovely women all in their 90s from the heritage home near Jamestown, North Dakota.

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And we were talking about isolation and how they were going to handle this COVID thing and

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and it all said, oh, this isn't nothing, we know how to take care of ourselves and each

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other.

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And so I just took notes on my yellow legal pad while they were speaking on the phone and then

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later I tried to find the poetry and in their lovely words and their hearts.

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And they all talked about, even growing up, how fortunate they were to have had a chance

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to work with horses and how that carried through into all of their lives.

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And also that they said, you know, we never knew we were poor.

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We always had time to go out on Saturday night, even after a hard work, a week of work.

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And so there was a lot of wisdom there I thought.

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And so I called this the Four Wise.

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Donna was a small town girl.

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But a man who changed her word, a farmer.

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With a wheat field lawn,

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several years they worked along.

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When he passed, she carried on.

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She farmed along,

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quarter century.

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She

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talks about the days that come

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To be afraid she ain't that one

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Ever bored to

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have been

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the Saturday

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Hands that cares away

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Horses, never knew we were

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Among the common food

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Better man, she loved right on

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They've married

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The evening quilts were sewn

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To warm souls of those unknown, her love, to

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best, until he met, he turned arrest, he was who he was.

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Working hands, her strong

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Saturday,

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the storm

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had to

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fill the

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sky to gift, good attitude.

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Young at heart,

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pretty good,

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the best you can't

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have a Saturday.

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And

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stuck his way

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was a small town girl met a man who changed her

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with a wheat field

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Well it's June last day of June

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and a beautiful moon a June moon

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last chance to get out

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find a hay field smell some sweet clover alfalfa fresh green grass especially

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out we had a little rain,

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June fields. A good night to be out in a hang your heart on the moon

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field. This is written on open swathor.

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Watch in the hay tumble out into a wind row behind, which would be cured by the sun and then gathered up to be bailed or maybe chopped.

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And if you're lucky,

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and you hear the words rise and up, if you're lucky,

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you'll have a screw driver or a rusty nail.

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The scratch-down the lyrics you're being given into the rust on the control panel.

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The more

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shadows shall all live fall.

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I will,

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like the haste and the tall, to the real land

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as they gather the take.

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into the region of winter

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and in stern we were weak and feel

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while the moon blazes

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in

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sweet grass

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tonight's the night gang tonight's the night well I had the privilege

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of going to a one room school for eight years little heart school number two

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south of Mandan about eight miles and I'll never forget that exciting day I

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I think I was probably in, I don't know, fourth or fifth grade, and the book mobile arrived.

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The citizens of Martin County had voted to raise their taxes a little tiny bit, so us

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farm kids could have equal access to all kinds of books, all kinds of books.

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And we got to go into the book mobile when it first arrived that first day, and I will never

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forget. It was crowded in there because there was just the narrow pathway between the racks

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of books and the smell of the books and the ink and the glue was something that I'll never

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forget in the excitement. And somehow not knowing what book to choose a book chose me and it was

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in my hands. I don't know how I got there. But it was a book called Ferdinand the Bull about

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Ferdinand the Bull who lived just outside of Madrid's Spain and he had been recruited to go

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to the bullfight in Madrid to a fight. But Ferdinand was quite happy where he was out on the hills

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around Madrid under his cork tree where he loved to just sit and smell the flowers, but he

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got recruited to go fight. But when he got into the bullring,

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he smelled the flowers that were

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in the ladies' hair and in their fancy bonnets and the flowers that they had thrown out for the

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but Ferdinand was taken back to his pasture.

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And he didn't fight because he was afraid or a coward.

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He didn't fight because he was courageous and brave, brave enough to...

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To be who he truly had been created to be, long before he was born, brave enough to know his peaceful heart, and to live his peaceful heart.

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And I think about Ferdinand a lot, especially these days, and I think he's still there. I know he is, I know he is, because he lives in my heart.

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now and now he can live in yours or whoever hears this story and I know he's under his

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cork tree smelling the flowers cool in the shade

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even spank

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you for a man. Well, I see it summer and we got a heat wave coming. So I don't

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know how many outdoor pools are in small towns around the area anymore, but in the town that

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I grew up near Mandan, the outdoor pool was the sort of the center of, well, I'll say cultural

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activity which is a pretty broad elm umbrella. And it was the place to be, I guess, I didn't

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get to go in a lot because I was mostly working on the farm. But a few times I did get in

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there. And I remember being warned by the lifeguard, not cross over the rope and get sucked

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into the deep and I never quite knew what that meant but it sounded pretty scary and I

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know that even though the pool was closed during the night it was still used so it's called

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down in the water, do they fall?

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At the big pool, summer evening, trying to keep cool.

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They had suck in, and the heat flew,

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when they laid down in the

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world of waking.

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In the night shed, jealous angels,

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shaking their heads, laughing lovers,

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all the fear fled,

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went whenever,

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Love is true, very nothing.

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Life will pitch, yeah. To the shoulder, up the middle,

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low and over. You don't have to,

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older. Watch and light flying, screw and shorter.

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Still the light shines, stronger shadows, over lifetimes,

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down in the warm.

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Whenever love is true, there's nothing you can do. It ain't always

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up

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to

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you. And you don't have to hit the homeer.

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I love singing and writing and living where I do,

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but it was quite some time before I realized it really realized that

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there was life going on here long before my ancestors arrived in the in the late 1800s

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and that there was love happening and games happening and hunting happening and

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life happening

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I had the good chance just by chance when I was hauling grain out to the elevator and then driving

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back out to the combine where my dad was waiting with another hopper full of grain and then

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we dump it in the truck and when the truck was full the drive into the grain elevator

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and manned in.

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And on one of those return trips it was about the first time I had driven the truck by myself.

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I was probably 14, 15 years old.

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And there was a fellow walking along what we called River Road,

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which is now Highway 1806 on his way out to his wonderful,

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rich standing rock community.

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And for some reason,

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I heard a little voice,

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say it's a hot day, hot August day,

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he could probably use a ride.

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So I slowed down and opened the kick to open the passenger door and he climbed in and the story unfolded.

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off the gas.

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I slew on the gravely greed. He climbed in the cab. No, I contact me. Six miles of silence, his head held up high.

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To my question on as I heard his reply. I'm rainbow, can he rainbow? I'm a singer, you know. On the highway to heaven.

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But your ease, Luke, until I come to my drum, and the big power of soul, I'm rainbow, Kenny Rainbow, I'm a singer, you know.

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His voice held conviction, from deep within the side, deeper than ego, far beyond pride.

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Thirty years later, it came to me clear he was a keeper of culture.

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Stories to hear.

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I hid in its youth, passed over his words.

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A heart held the truth of all that it heard.

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We came to his corner, I know I was blessed as he called from the gravel.

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Into my past, I'm rainbow, cany rainbow, I'm a singer, who you know, on the highway to heaven, the journey is so, till I come to my drum, at the big powwow show, I'm rainbow, cany rainbow, I'm a singer, yeah know.

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Now I sing the stage lights, and clear prairie stars, and holy old churches, and smoke holy bars.

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I'm very, I'm very nibbers with song, I know why I'm a singer, where I belong.

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Like rainbow, can't he rainbow? I'm a singer, you know. On the highway to heaven.

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The journey to school, till it comes to my drum. At the big power show.

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Like rainbow, can't he rainbow? I'm a singer, you know.

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Like rainbow, can't he rainbow? I'm a singer, you know.

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I've had the privilege of being with many lovely Mama cows at their time of giving birth and

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quite a special privilege to be out under cold march stars.

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This is before we started caving in May, which is when we should be caving.

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But nevertheless, to be with a mama cow at that special time, in the dark, under clear, clear, starry sky.

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In the quiet,

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and then the magic happens,

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and after the mama call has cleaned the calf,

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and taught it to nurse, she lies down,

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and I may have given her some dried cat tails to lie down and smelling of mint and river and willow,

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and the calf finds its way over to that warm tummy of the mama, and slides down into the calf.

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Oh, my little dark, I'd want you who'd get to see the sun, born before,

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Chili don't buy all my my safe

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dirty farm from past the moon beyond the star

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Now you rinse

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you down in a catty

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catty

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and star

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Venus on

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in a catty

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They've been long last fall, they didn't count till ten and tall

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Put up dry in yonder shed, to make for you

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I'm not used

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to my soul,

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any doubt, and I can't

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be this new

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me down