Morning aubade (photos)

The coyotes are howling at both ends of the valley—in broad daylight. Harvest moon has come and gone. Earlier it was a family of small owlets who still can’t properly hoot. Soon, Bucky and his old father with the hoarfrost dipped nose, will daintily dink their way down from the hill to get their morning drink from the creek. They have no fear, now that hunting season is over. Last night was supposed to be first frost, but again, the grass has no dew on it, so we can’t see the lacework of the orb spiders laying out their crocheted webs on the dry grass. Even the dew is forsaking us.

I love lying in my flannel sleeping bag listening to the morning chorus of birds. Mostly ravens patrolling the valley muttering grock-grock, and the small screech owls in the trees are having trouble getting the correct sequence of their hoot on, so I can’t tell what species they are, not great horned owls, nor burrowing owls. One-note towhees and chupping robins add to the morning’s cacophony. The robins and warblers are getting hammered on the clusters of madrone berries. Soon the quail will add their smik-smik sounds in the underbrush. The bluejay adds his metallic squitch-squitch scissor sharpening sounds to the score. 

The redtail hawks no longer circle this valley, nor call it home, but an opportunistic red-shouldered hawk moved in and has raised a family, she is constantly squawking like a fishwife, at war with the ravens and crows who are now barking like dogs. No love lost between them. I prefer the redtails with their lonely tcheer sound. My totem animal. I heard one redtail passing overhead, why do they no longer stay here? 

Who said nature was peaceful? It’s one massive turf war out there raging tooth and claw. A hummingbird lectures a poison oak bush with its mip-clicks. The gray squirrels are busy scolding each other in the bay trees down by the creek. I love waking up in the tent, knowing I don’t have much longer where I can sleep outside like this. Poignant reminder of passing time. Yesterday, I had to secure the tent, really a rickety summer gazebo, from the fierce winds bellowing in from the east. It rocked like a taut jib sail, the tie down ropes singing like harp strings. 

Yesterday I finished stacking the rest of the cordwood for winter. Like a draft horse I pulled 20 small wagonloads of wood up the hill. Mostly dense cypress and fruitwood. Day three of my second COVID booster, I’m puffing, but I feel surprisingly good. First sun illumines the buckeyes, small golden orbs. The deer are hungry, eating the jackets off the toxic buckeye. 

So much love and hard labor is required to clear out my grandmother’s old garden orchard after a half-century of neglect. Last week we took 16 loads of debris down to the road to the county chipper, we are fire hardening the land. We will haul 20 more loads down to the road, and repeat again the following week. Two little old ladies with broad backs and battery-operated chainsaws who refuse to succumb to the vagaries of age. My hips hurt from hauling wood, but this winter, my cousins will stay warm. 

The tongue of low lying morning fog is infrequent these days and because of it, the trees—especially the redwoods and firs—are aging out, dying from pine beetle infestation and a profound lack of water. A tinderbox of a pocket canyon waiting for the hunger of a match. The last time this valley burned was in 1942. The first thing that drew me to poetry was the the wind in the fir trees sounding like ocean waves. And the bluejays making similes. I didn’t realized how much I missed keeping rhythm with the seasons, especially the long dance of the fall. Saying goodbye to my childhood. Maybe for the last time.

HUNTER’S MOON

The warbler arrived during the very first days of fall,

yellow as the big leaf maple deep in the canyon.

Mornings I’m awakened by his body, a small sun

banging against the pane. He peers into my garret, 

determined to enter the dark dream of the house, 

but my grandmother said, Death always knocks. 

To let a bird in was to let death enter the house.

At first, I thought his reflection spurred him on, 

but on overcast mornings, he’s still at the ready. 

Sometimes he rests on the window screen, 

his tiny claws gaining purchase on the mesh. 

People offer sage advice, say, add pictures of raptors.

Close the blinds. It’s his karma, he’s not hurting himself, 

not like that nuthatch who attacked the outdoor mirror

with such ferocity, I gave him time out, between bouts,

he rested in the hollow of my hand, until the next foray.

Tiny warrior, he fluttered onto the daybed, spent,

his rage against the interloper knew no respite. 

I covered the mirror with a towel to ease our pain. 

But this time I’m not willing to cut off the light. 

Besides, this bird takes time out as he reconnoiters.

I wanted to write about something completely different,

not death, nor the monograph of a warbler seeking solace. 

I forgot the nuances of fall, the dim light, long nights, 

the waning hunter’s moon like a gourd 

glowing in the branches of the redwood. 

Hello Moon, I said, and the moon winked back.

10/12 Write On! With Susie Terence

Gallery 6 reading poster

From City Lights Bookstore: 

On this day, 67 years ago, the Six Gallery reading took place on 3119 Fillmore St.
Philip Lamantia (reading the work of John Hoffman)
Michael McClure
Allen Ginsberg
Gary Snyder
Philip Whalen
Kenneth Rexroth was the MC

A momentous event in Western literature, 1955, this reading at Gallery 6 heralded in the birth of the Beat poets. Kenneth Rexroth would’ve been the most renown poet of his time, part of the San Francisco literary renaissance. The others were relatively new to poetry. The idea of Beat poets had not yet been coined.

My old boyfriend, John Oliver Simon, was one of the Six Gallery poets featured at a later reading. He had a framed poster on his living room wall. He considered it his most significant reading. I never thought to take a photo of it.

I knew everyone on this list, except for Lamantia. I only knew McClure in passing; Ginsberg and Rexroth were aloof. Snyder and Whalen were always kind, especially Philip. 

Also in attendance were Jack Kerouac, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who published Howl after hearing it at the reading. And Neal Cassady was the doorman. One can assume that Jack Spicer was also there. And Robin Blazer. One could also speculate Robert Duncan was there too…. It was a small world. Gallery co-founder, Wally Hedrick lived in the San Geronimo Valley, where I grew up….

I have old negatives (I need to scan) of most of them….way back from when I was newly arrived to poetry. I was always documenting readings as no one else was…. We produced a new reading with Kenneth Rexroth and Michael McClure at Sonoma State, it was a stellar event. Ginsberg came to a friend’s memorial service in Santa Rosa which blew all our minds.

Rexroth, who wrote a weekly column, was a hiking buddy of my grandfather’s, at Devil’s Gulch. And his wife used to attend our church in Lagunitas. She kept the name long after Kenneth had divorced her.

Poet Kenneth Rexroth wrote some 700 columns (1960-67) for SF Examiner, he was known primarily as a political and cultural radical, and  even (somewhat misleadingly) as "the godfather of the Beat Generation." See my post on Rexroth columns, a synopsis of the reading from Verdant Press, and McClure’s reminiscences at UC Press post.

ORION’S BELT

Nights are drawing in, 

dusk announces the timeless march 

of the stars. I can see Orion’s Belt 

emerging through the trees. 

Then, his shoulders and club. 

Then the Pleiades, gazelle leaps.

The hunter and the hunted gird their loins.

The winter pear tree glows, 

rivaling the rubescent poison oak.

A woodpecker probes the depths of the pine. 

A staccato rhythm. Time to stack firewood. 

The incessant drone and purr of chainsaws, 

a distant symphony echoes in smoky canyons, 

a blue haze tangles in the limbs of tall trees. 

The owlets practice their newly minted song, 

it’s a bit hit and miss, so they say whooo-hoo

with reckless abandon along with the coyotes.

But the crickets haven’t gotten the memo 

that summer’s really over. 

So, they carry on, as crickets do

in joyous tintinnabulation and encore.

Harvest moon clears the ridge, 

filled with light from the well of the past. 

Frogs join in the lively august chorus. 

Bottled light spills across the path. 

The young buck sharpens his new horns 

on the downed cypress limbs. 

He devours the plum and ivy clippings. 

The acrid odor of early fires, 

a pungent memory announces

the arrival of the dark season.

10/6 Mill Valley Library non-fiction workshop with Sarah Broderick k

I wrote this is a prose peace and everyone said it was a poem so I put it into lines to see what it looks like. I am still undecided what to do with it. I should’ve kept the prose version as well. Whenever a prose poem is converted into a poem, many lines need to change. We’re not there yet. Still debating what to do.

DISTANT SHORES

     —after Anne Sexton’s Her Kind

We learned early to dress like the others, 

in order to blend in. But it was a small boat 

and there wasn’t enough room for everyone

if you didn’t fit in, it was a case of sink or swim. 

When the nuns arrived announcing religion, 

their wimples were sails aimed toward distant shores.

Our arms became tall masts, we were identified.

We caught the wind. It was a case of where to begin. 

I was the daydreamer, the chameleon, 

and the easel, my siren call. I painted red skies

because the white page was a hungry void

waiting to be filled, when I couldn’t blend in.

I inhabited a world of my own making, 

to escape the confines of the classroom. 

When the teacher took away my brushes, 

I used my hands, then my blood, I didn’t fit in.

Tall clouds set sail for distant shores.

Even the wind couldn’t hold them in.

10/5 Write On! With Susie Terence