Rafting the Brazos

Learning the Story of Scars After the axe-head buried itself in his ankle, my father clung to the log he was splitting, squeezing his eyes like fists. Twelve, he logged those woods for years with his father--Arkansas, the great depression, doing whatever they could. Groaning, he jerked and jerked the axe like a pump handle, he screamed and went on pumping until the foot fell back, hinged by the ankle, white and spurting. With a bandana he held it and held it while Arkansas flooded, and saw his father running, his own axe raised ready to kill whatever snake slashed the heel of his son. I learned that scar like a tree split by lightning, healed over, knew my father had in him a boy who had suffered alone in a forest. "McDonald's evocation of nature and farming is impressively simple, but suggests mystery and depth."--Publisher's Weekly "McDonald draws upon his personal vision of West Texas . . . offering a strong and sensitive image of the land, its people, its sense of space and struggle."--Books of the Southwest "We are privy to a consciousness that encompasses Texas from the Gulf to the Caprock, from oxen-slow days to jet lag . . . Rafting the Brazos makes us wish the poet could . . . do nothing but chronicle the spirals of West Texas hawks."--Dallas Morning News "West Texas, the land and its people, provide both the subject and the soul of McDonald's powerful poetry."--Writers at Work