Ghost trees, Michael Dow Workshop

During the winter it got dark early, we had double sessions at school and I got home after 5 PM. The cantilevered boughs of the trees reached across the long road that wove in and out of the trunks like a gray snake heading north. There were fallen trees decomposing along either side of the creek that ran alongside the road. My flashlight failed at the bridge. In the twilight, their light bark glowed faintly and they lay in waiting like great lumbering phosphor worms  and my fear rose up within me like a great black cape of smothering darkness.


3/20/1980 ?
added 5/3/2016
Michael Dow Workshop
freewrite

Sonnet Form Michael Dow Workshop

Sonnet Form

Mist morning when it is quiet
and the lips of fog kiss
the sky, beneath it, a riot
of flowers blossom in the dark abyss

The wind rustles the petals in the plum trees
bringing a snowstorm of blossoms in June
the vines are choking the bottom growth, and the peas
blossom—a late frost may strike and prune

the new buds with black tongue
before the growth's barely begun.

3/20/1980
 added 5/3/2016

Michael Dow Workshop

3 Poems from Michael Dow workshop

I am a shiny raw yolk
bundled up in a clear membrane.
You pick me up, hold me in your hand.
I ooze black ink through the pores
wherever your skin touches mine.

Surprised by the bleeding, you drop me,
and try to pick me up again, carefully.

And my softness eludes you.
I roll off your fingertips, away from your touch.
The blackness spreads over the yellow,
leaving only a flaccid sack behind.

11/28/1979


With leonine head bent
and hair askew
he sits guarded
with arms and legs crossed
His gaze set on his leather shoe
he listens, nodding
as if in agreement.
I wonder how the syllables
rest in his ears.

11/28/1979
Michael Dow workshop


I wake to the dawn
and take my breathing slow
We think by logical deduction
If logic is deduction,
then what is there to conclude?
I learn from the breath
It carries me where I wander
Along a slipstream of thought
liked a snake tasting
a breath a of sunshine.

11/28/1979
Michael Dow workshop

I AM A HAWK 3 takes Michael Dow workshop

I am a hawk circling upward in a thermal draft, 

and the sky is blue. You are a cricket on a dusty path in summer.

I am a feather spiraling down to earth from the tail of the red hawk

You are a red leaf floating in the breeze

The pileTed woodpecker knocks on the tree

and we drift into autumn, as one.

10/3/1979

Michael Dow workshop

I am a hawk circling upon a thermal draft and the sky is blue.

I am a feather spiraling downward to earth from the tail of a hawk.

I have rested on the leader limbs of the Inverness pine

And I am the mouse whose tiny paws grew feathers

I become the hawk and launch into space

A blackbird and I head south as the storm approaches.

10/15/1979

The roots of the Inverness pine were planted in t he earth by my grandmother when I was a child. Then, the free was no taller than me. Nearly two decades later, it looms up into the sky, the very symbol of strength and clarity. Many times I have been the hawk resting on the leader branches, I have also been the mouse who climbs up to the top to see what it can see. He is afraid of heights, still he climbs upward. The  top sways in the breeze, he clings to the pine needles, with tiny paws. He sees beyond his scope. His fur sprouts feathers, he becomes the hawk, and launches out into space.

10/19/1979

I think I attempted to make this work several times over, to no avail. What I know now, compared to what I knew then. 11/2/2015

TILLING THE FIELD Michael Dow workshop

DRAFT (don't know if I ever typed this one up)

The moon is almost fitful tonight.

A train whistles and moans

midway between night and morning
Cylindrical wheels resonate,

a throbbing echo and clatter.
The ticking of the clock echoes

the throbbing train, and the heart.

Systolic/diastolic. Open & closed.
There is a storm gathering 

in the direction of her eyes.

A line should be the length of a row.
It's the breath feeling, 

a staccato furrow of assonance 

dissonance and consonants.

The break in the link 

the breath and the line 

is a unit of breath.

Maybe we should go back,
chant in the rhythm of the hunt,
chant in the rhythm of plowing.
A line runs the length of a row.
To make a verse is to turn back on itself

and go against the direction of the row.
Go against the direction of the chant
boustrophedon, as the plowman walks.

There is a gathering storm.

July 1, 1979 Michael Dow workshop

minor rev. 11/2/2015 (mostly consolidated line breaks) 

Child in Changing Times Conference  

Arts in Everyday Living

6/28 to July 1

SSU

GATHERING STORM

I need hard copy of this poem  DRAFT

I awoke with this sentence:

there's a storm gathering in the direction of her eyes.

She stands waiting

for him by the green pond. 

Conversation drifts by with the water, 

floats with the hours. His lichen eyes, 

impenetrable as the surface,

leave her stranded 

by all the ponds of the world

As he turns to leave, her image ripples,

her eyes gather in the storm.

Tonight there's a promise of rain in the air. 

June 29, 1979

Michael Dow workshop

Child in Changing Times Conference  

Arts in Everyday Living

6/28 to July 1

SSU

HOLLYHOCK Michael Dow workshop

Michael's Hollyhock DRAFT
In the afternoon room of dust and summer's heat,
Michael picks up a flower from the red carpet
where it had fallen from her long a gleaming hair.
The hollyhocks edges were bruised,
withered from the wearing.

Pollen scattered across its petals
Yellow flecks on the maroon petals
He raised it gently to his nose to inhale its scent
so like the first sip of tea in the tea ceremony.
It had no special older, just color to keep it afloat.

The flower thirsted for water, or even nectar.
She plucked it during the hard heat of day
The sap that coursed through its veins
in such sweet green succor
like a lazy river on a summer's day,
severed from the umbilicus.

The flower adorned her hair
by the hand that robbed it of life.
The humming bees in the flower,
their legs, laden with pollen,
dandled around that plucked blossom.

Flower trumpet faded, read into the carpet,
red in the hand, withered in the hair.

6/29/1979

Michael Dow workshop

Child in Changing Times Conference  

Arts in Everyday Living

6/28 to July 1

SSU