James Ross Kelly lives in Northern California next to the Sacramento River. He has been a journalist for Gannet, a travel book editor, and had a score of labour jobs—the in-between, jobs you get from being an English major. He started writing poetry and short stories in college on the GI Bill, after college he continued and gave occasional readings in the Pacific Northwest during the 1980s. Mr. Kelly worked as an environmental writer for the Forest Service in Oregon and Southeast Alaska where he retired in 2012. Born in Kansas, Mr. Kelly was a long-time resident of Southern Oregon where he grew up. Kelly’s third and most recent book Above Neil Rock: Poems and Stories was published in 2024 by Oak Savannah Press. The work published herein are from that book and is available online.

The Vet is coming at two

My Dog is dying
Under the crepe myrtle
In full blossom & drifting
Down over him & me &
My wife & the Vet is coming at two,
Buddy is 14 & had the full
Dog experience, me rescuing him from
A rancher who got him as a stray
Into his ranch & announced he
Had too many dogs, & his wife
Knowing he would shoot him,
I worked with her & she asked twenty years ago,
“Would you like a nice dog?”
& I saw him and said, “Hi buddy,”
& he sat down right beside me & took
A pet & he was my Buddy after that
For me & my son & my wife,
He’s Chased cows on my rancher buddy’s 7,000-acre ranch
With Cow-dog English Shepherds in Eastern Oregon,
& had three years of running with Walker Hounds
On Black bear chases in Alaska, with my hunting buddy
Biologist & once treed, we then took pictures
& petted up the dogs, we let all the bears go
Once he treed a bear on his own,
but he would come back to the truck
If the Walker hounds had a five-mile chase
He in his Airedale/Rottweiler
compact 90 lb. frame defended our yard
From a marauding German shepherd,
& after the stitch up
I had him neutered, & he was still hard on cats but
He learned to live with the one we had,
Early on I saw that he would point cats
Paw up and tail straight like a bird dog &
Well, I have had to pay a number
of vet bills to stitch up felines
& just two weeks ago feeble as he is
One wandered into his backyard
& he tried for one last biting of the cat,
tipping over the lawn chairs,
Table & umbrella, & barbecue,
He always had the seeming happy dog smile
Even now that he cannot move his hind legs
& he quivers in pain
& the Vet is coming at two, & my dear wife
Has been weeping for three days &
The crepe myrtle blossoms are falling on him
& the Vet is coming at two.

We awoke once

We awoke once
Having slept under the stars &
On a red dawn solstice
Lavender light
& walked naked
to edge of your
roof garden
as sun’s rays became
another’s midnight
& in a whirl
I saw us descendants
of a beginning incessant motion,
inhabitants on a small sphere
whose turning
lends music
from universe & spring
a little off key &
on the docket
recipients of circles
set in motion, then
figments to one another, now
figures to our heirs &
I did not know how
to tell you
before you left for India that
I thought pantheism
was a clever lie.