THE PURE LIFE

The first dream began in the mountains, 

and curled up like fog in deep canyons.

All that beauty with no way out, but up. 

But still, you couldn’t see a way out.

And so, you scrambled over rough scree 

seeking a trail but it disappeared into the void

until you were confronted by a sheer rock wall 

where the choice was to either turn around, 

or to seek a new route down, so you began

to study the rock face for hidden clues, 

searching for secret toeholds and handfasts 

to lift that Sisyphean weight toward the sky.

But there were so many false trails and dead ends 

that could all lead you into that moment of freefall.

Yet you might be tempted to spread your wings 

and soar like a bird testing the fetters of the air.

To think of how the stories of distant horizons beckon.

But landing is inevitable, and it will always be rough.

9/28 Write On with Terri Glass

THE RAPTURE OF THE DUTCH GOLDEN AGE

While I watched the birds flit in the skewed rafters of Scheve Jan,

Oude Kerk, my friend pointed to a worn inscription on the stone floor.

I got down on my hands and knees in order to read it,

and shrieked, as I was sprawled atop a Petri dish, the graveslab 

of the father of microbiology, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, 

a draper who perfected the loupe and the aquatic microscope.

He, who discovered kleine diertjes, cavorting wee beasties, 

animalcules frolicking in the rainwater and in the canals of Delft—

delven means to dig, and so he delved a canal into the obscure arts.

He was the first to witness unnamed creatures of an unknown world—

paramecia, protozoa & spermatozoa—I don’t even want to go there.

In winter light, the church was too dark for my camera to record,

I needed spectacles to see. But at that moment my feet 

(& knees) gave me a more pious vision. I was so enthralled,

I overlooked the plaque of that other master of ultramarine shadow 

and light, I came too late to see—Vermeer, and his camera lucida, 

but at a vlooienmarkt in front of City Hall, I found antique Delft tiles 

painted with dragonflies, and a beatific saint rising above the marsh.

9/27

Observationes microscopicae drawn by Antoni Leeuwenhoek, 1682 Wiki

Poems & photos published in Memories of Southern California: Poetic Recollections, Four Feathers Press

Five poems and two photos published in Memories of Southern California: Poetic Recollections, PDF/hard copy, Four Feathers Press monthly publication plus chapbook series, Don Kingfisher Campbell, Editor, 2022. 13th WAVE, Storm, Buenaventura (photo), TECOPA HOT SPRINGS (photo), NATURAL SELECTION, SIMMER RITUAL. 

Yeep, I thought I was submitting poems to another edition of Spectrum. I didn’t get past the premise of the title—I like themed entries—as the deadline was hours away. My bad. Imagine my surprise to learn it’s Four Feather Press, not Spectrum, which has moved to an online format. Not sure how to handle the format as it straddles publishing realms, not quite a vanity press, only existing as a PDF, or print on demand, and the poems are not available on Don’s website so very few people will ever actually see the poems—other than those of us who have had poems accepted. Oh well. 

I expected Don to take one poem, not all five, and one wasn’t even a poem! I’ve known Don for decades—most of my life through California Poets in the Schools—and I do like supporting his publishing endeavors with my work and I find it a good choice to find published homes for my older poems. 

Perfect bound printed copies of the book will be available for $15 a copy (includes shipping) until November 14th, 2022. Please use Meta Pay (Don Kingfisher Campbell), Venmo (@don-campbell-82), or Zelle (my email address). Or snail mail a check to Don Campbell, 1313 Edgewood Dr, Alhambra, CA 91803-1909.

THE BRONZE HORSE

The big bronze horse statue stood on three legs 

behind the fireplace for decades, abandoned. 

The detachable western saddle on its back 

was blanketed with spider webs and the dust of neglect. 

Once part of a train boiler, our makeshift fireplace,

sat on a discarded iron wheel base with no place left to go—

It was so cavernous, you could roast an ox in its maw.

Still, it kept us warm, as my grandmother fed its hunger 

with massive oak logs that slumbered on rebar firedogs

throughout the long stretch of cold winter nights.

The red eyes of coals winked out as she smoored the fire.

The horse lived in a realm of brick hearth and cast-iron walls. 

No pastures, blue skies, or clouds carrying a promise of rain.

How many years that discarded horse must’ve dreamed 

of escaping the dark confines of that inglenook.

It was a curio my uncles picked up from the military PBX, 

during the war years, along with the print of the lone cypress.

This was during a time when Remington scenes were all the rage, 

decked out on the best coffee tables and mantelpieces 

along with gaudy ashtrays and chrome cocktail shakers.

But this was no Remington horse and cowboy 

depicting the nostalgia of the Wild West. 

It was a slant dream of Americana, a peace offering 

made by a captive army of alien workers

stationed on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

The bronze thoroughbred balanced on three legs, 

the fourth leg lost, his race was run, but in my mind’s eye

he was was wild as the mustangs on the prairie

if you removed the saddle and the ball chain reins.

Not something to be put down—not like in real life. 

My grandmother tried to glue the leg with epoxy, 

then she made a splint of asbestos tape. Nothing worked. 

It was not a dream that could be mended, 

for it was made of base pot-metal, not enduring bronze.

Stamped on his belly, Made in Occupied Japan. A facsimile—

like mirrored reflections imploding inward upon each other.

A wounded child, I was crazy about all things horses, 

so in that peremptory possessiveness of children,

any found horse was always mine. Mine!

This was during the cusp of days before

those plastic Breyer horses became so popular. 

I collected a stableful of them, replete with broken legs, 

as I tried to ride them into the box canyons of imagination.

I was a child always looking for an escape route.

Sometimes, when the wind blew down the chimney, 

it howled like a train carving an arc on distant horizons.

9/21 Terri Glass Write On!

Minty fresh mouse traps

After the oil change folks cleaned out my car’s air filter, where apparently the country mice were partying heartily, I drenched it in peppermint oil to drive them off—who knew those hitchhiker mice don’t like mint?  So instead of vacating the premises, they merely moved abodes. I had a sleekit timorous mousy living in my emergency brake sheath. I dumped peppermint oil down the shaft too and my car smelled like a strong breath mint with vague undertones of mice urine. My car reeked with the toxic odor of mint oil, so strong that it made my eyes water, and I couldn’t use the air conditioner or the heater, let alone, drive the car without leaving all the windows open. God knows what it was doing to my lungs. The mouse ate through my food stashes, chewing through Ziploc baggies and canisters, and then it moved onto my art supplies which made for colorful poop scattered at both ends of my car. Then it began to shred the car insulation and paper to make a nest. I removed several nests, but she was persistent. The last thing I needed was a mouse raising her family in my emergency brake sheath. It came down to this, it was either the mouse, or me. I was tired of being a mouse chauffeur, not to mention, unpaid landlord. Besides, I could not tolerate the grassy odor of a pissy rodent living in the close confines of my car. Especially during the heat wave. I feared that the wiring would be next. I tried all manner of snap-traps and glue traps. She didn’t like peanut butter, and deftly removed the nuts and grains that I left as bait. Nothing worked until the exterminator gave me huge extra-strength glue traps meant for rats. It was a case of location location location. I tried several spots in the car, nothing worked. Eventually I found the sweet spot under the passenger seat next to the emergency wine bottles. I admired the sleek beauty of such a tiny being capable of wreaking such havoc in my car. And then I did the coup de grace endgame with my shoe.

Petaluma Poetry Walk reading book party at Aqus café

I was a bit surprised to open the first part of the reading. Earlier we had a memorial reading for Geri diGiorno, founder of the Petaluma Poetry Walk. I read a rough poem about a car accident in a man being killed. Geri’s daughter Michelle dressed me in a scarf and a hat afterwards told me to take books— many were signed.

• THE GIFT OF THIS DAY

At Geri diGiorno’s memorial reading

At the memorial reading, Geri’s daughter hands me a poem, and I read it aloud to the audience, cold turkey. I had no idea what to expect. Or where the poem was going. I had not pre-read it to myself. It reminded me of the time Molly Fisk asked me to read a poem of hers, at a Green Fuse reading in Sebastopol, and as I read her poem, there was that indelible moment when you can’t go back, and you’re committed to finish the poem, no matter how hard the subject matter is. The transgressions of her father. There is no going back. Like with Geri’s poem about a man in a red and black car, airborne and all that red and black everywhere. And Geri’s daughter, Michelle dressing me in one of Geri’s red felt, hats and a red and black scarf. I inhabit the moment of her personae. Her poem, her death.

During the summer of fire

During the summer of fire I slept beneath the madrone at my grandmother’s house, herself long gone, but the evening breeze carried the sorrow of smoke, and the sky was bathed an amber light. The moon, a raging red eye seeking water. The coyotes didn’t know whether to howl or to bark. And the young horned owls, still working on their slow solos, had trouble counting the notes. The stars, a distant memory. Their light occluded by the veil of smoke, the death knell of dying trees.

Mt. Tam watercolor for Laura Austin Wiley, 4 x 6”

I ran my original watercolor thru a cartoon app

Masks

The face behind the face, the mask that becomes analogous with time present, the idea that we are always impersonating ourselves, even when we think we have removed the mask. Another one hides behind it. And so on. Impersonators impersonating impersonators. Why all the tears? When will it ever end? My reflection is clouded silver where the mercurial silver peeled off the back of the old beveled mirror like madrone bark. It’s like looking into all those banks of mirrors at the Exploratorium, mirrors looking into themselves ad infinitum, that greeny distance of rain, a portal into another world where any dimension is possible, even time. Once again, our lives have become too structured—even at the tail end of this pandemic, we are busy filling our dance cards. Did we not learn anything under sequestration? Sometimes it’s nice to shut the merry-go-round off, let the ponies run free and become someone else’s nightmare. Hooves on the pavement at midnight, my nemesis, the ponies on walkabout again, me running down the road in my nightgown and the ponies wily as coyotes, always just out of reach. The cat wants in on the conversation but she can only sing a one-note aria. Breezes coming in from the west. Storm brewing at last.

8/15 Mill Valley Library non-fiction workshop with Sarah Broderick

BRÓN TROGAIN

Fall began its descent abruptly this year, 

breaking summer’s anvil almost without warning, 

verdant trees turned yellow overnight, 

having gotten their final curtain call too soon. 

The forest understory is painted with amber light 

of hazel leaves, big leaf maple, and box elder, 

and the oaks are dressed in fiery gowns of poison oak. 

So far, we’ve been spared the ravages of wildfires 

still raging in the Cascades and in the Sierras. 

I can no longer remember the names of wildfires, 

now too many to count. Soon there will be no trees 

left to breathe in this dire Anthropocene epoch.

Distant smoke tints the harvest moon the color 

of returning salmon, but the creeks are dry.

A surprise earthquake keeps us on our toes. 

The earth is moaning and shaking, as if in dismay.

We move into the season with abruptness, no warning. 

The Irish called end of summer Brón trogain, earth’s sorrow. 

A time of ravens on the horizon. May the rains come early. 

For I am tired of weeping, and my tears no longer fall.

9/14 Terri Glass, Write on!

At the Pine Aire Resort

At the Pine Aire Resort, small red cabins with covered porches in white trim, greeted us. They lined the Feather River, where the rocks rose up like piles of old workboots, where slumbering gold wedged in the streambed, wended its way downstream into mad dreams. I remember how my aunts gathered in the tribes, the sisters, our grandmother, and myriad cousins straddling the generations, we caravanned up to the Feather River traversing the brutal heat of the Central Valley, in old vans reeking of oil, to visit Norm’s place, the sweet pine odor of Las Plumas del Oro, and seething crickets, greeted us. Each of us claimed a small bit of turf on the covered porches, our home away from home for a week. We were within listening range of the river and the myriad frogs. My family took vacations at my Grandma’s house in West Marin. Late at night, the train with its angry red eye, whistled its way through the slate-walled moonlit canyon, the rails hummed a precursor song like a lonesome harmonica. Norm was the size of a VW bug, with a heart of gold. Gold was his abiding passion, he showed us his prized gnarled nuggets nestled in cotton boxes. He couldn’t bring himself to cash them in. He took us to his claim downriver, and after we sluiced for gold all day long, we shared small specks of the sun that winked and gleaned with promise. Then my grandmother, and the aunts began to die off, one by one, my mother included. This was the place where she told me the cancer had come back. I never saw her again. Years later, my cousin and I made a return trip to the Feather River, Norm was long gone, but the two housemaids who always took care of us, greeted us like old friends. They inherited the cabins, and Norm’s Pine Aire tradition carried on.

9/7 Susie Terence, Write On!

• THE SONG OF PASSING TRAINS

At the highland games

 I carry my house with me, my entire car is a go bag. Right now, I’m packed to the gills, ready for the next storm. Ready for my workshop at the Highland games. Encampment, where we create an ambience somewhere between fantasy and the middle ages. All of us re-creating a time that never was. We will greet the public and we will take on the persona of our characters, convincing the public that we are magicians. I will create a living history art room in the barn. I will hang my silk art up and it will flutter in the wind and look like a gypsy camp. After Covid, the games were canceled, sequestration. So now I feel so rusty and out of sorts but the show must go on.

9/1 Mill Valley nonfiction workshop with Sarah Broderick