PALACE IN THE POPPLE
On Wisconsin Outdoors,
In 1982 as a newly hired teacher for Weyerhaeuser Public School District, Weyerhaeuser, Wisconsin, I rented a house from the estate of the recently deceased owner, he one Gordon Heuer. Gordon had been Superintendent of Schools there in Weyerhaeuser for many years and he was a beloved leader and prominent figure in that close-knit community. I never knew Gordon but all the staff to my newly assigned school knew him well and remembered him fondly. I taught there and lived in the village for eight years and each and every year, just before the start of deer gun season, one of the veteran teaching staff would dig out a deer hunting poem that Gordon had penned years prior to his death.
Now as our nights turn to frost and as we swing into fall, I am sure that I am not the only man in this state whose thoughts wander ahead to deer hunt season. I think the poem hits the essence of why we all love the hunt. If nothing else, you will enjoy the read!
Sincerely,
PETER J. WERNER
Plover, Wisconsin
PALACE IN THE POPPLE
By Gordon H. Heuer
It’s a smoky, raunchy bears’ nest
With an unswept, drafty floor.
And pillow ticking curtains
And knife scars on the door.
The smell of a pine knot fire
From a stove pipe that’s come loose
Mingles sweetly with the boot grease
And the Copenhagen snoose.
There are work worn .30-30’s
With battered, steel shod stocks,
And drying lines of long johns
And of steaming, pungent socks.
There’s a table for the Bloody Four
And their game of two-card draw,
And there’s deep and dreamless sleeping
On bunk ticks stuffed with straw.
Jerry and Jack stand by the stove,
Their gun talk loud and hot,
And Bogie has drawn a pair of kings
And is raking in the pot.
Frank’s been drafted again as cook
And is peeling some spuds for stew
While Bruce wanders by in baggy drawers
Reciting “Dan McGrew.”
No where on earth is fire so warm
Nor coffee so infernal,
No whiskers so stiff, jokes so rich,
Nor hope blooming so eternal.
A man can live for a solid week
In the same old underbritches
And walk like a man and spit when he wants
And scratch himself where he itches.
I tell you, boys, there’s no place else
Where I’d rather be, come fall,
Where I eat like a bear and sing like a wolf
And feel like I’m bull-pine tall,
In that raunchy cabin out in the bush
In the land of raven and loon,
With a tracking snow lying new on the ground
At the end of the Rutting Moon.