Green Day: Green Fuse review (end of article is missing) fan Mail from Barbara Meyn

The Sonoma County Independent • October 27 - Nov 2, 1994    P25

Keeper of the Fire: Ten years ago, poet and Santa Rosa Junior College instructor Brian Bold inherited the editorship of "Green Fuse," the county's most enduring poetry journal.

Green Day
The tiny "Green Fuse" poetry journal isn't exactly setting the world afire-or is it? By Mauren Hurley

"The force that through the green fuse drives the flower/ Drives my green age. —DYLAN THOMAS

The poems found in Sonomas longest-lived literary magazine, Green Fuse, are not coyly veiled in the dusty deep-throat metaphor of academia; they explode the DNA of words onto the world, they take
to the streets, they broadcast the news in the tradition of the doctor poet William Carlos Williams, who said, "It is difficult getting the news from poetry/ but men die miserably/ every day /for lack of what is found there."

It's impossible to write about the driving force behind Green Fuse without mentioning its founding editor, progressive psychologist/poet/artist Ralph Smith, who befriended many of the poets whose work appeared in his magazine.

The current editor in chief, Santa Rosa poet Brian Boldt--a Santa Rosa Junior College instructor who was a frequent contributor to Green Fuse-recalls his first meeting with Smith: "I met Ralph at the Peace and Justice Center, and the first thing he asked me was “What do you think of Ferlinghetti's work?' It was a test.

FROM THE BEGINNING, Green Fuse was a strictly grassroots affair. Smith, who founded the magazine in 1983 while in his late 70s, collected all the material often discovered by word of mouth. He typed the poems, coordinated the printing, and scheduled collating and book parties, all on a shoestring budget and with assistance from his wife, Marcia Keller-Smith, and a handful of faithful followers.

In 1988, Smith invited Boldt to become an associate editor. The following year, Boldt inherited the editorship from Smith who, dying of can-cer, wanted to ensure the magazine's continued survival. "I did three issues with Ralph and suddenly he was gone," Bold says, adding that Smith spent a significant portion of the last day of life going over the pedantic details of operating the journal he loved so much.

The biannual Green Fuse celebrates a full decade of publishing this month with issue No. 21, and the number of poets represented in each issue has jumped from approximately 35 poets to some 50. Smith envisioned bringing many Sonoma County poets and artists into the fold. The result was mostly good poetry and funky art. Under the guidance of Boldt, Green Fuse has evolved from a funky, stapled chapbook (printed on copy machines liberated from the mundane, late at night when the office was closed) to a handsomely bound 64-page format with a press run of 600 copies.

It is now more sophisticated in appearance; the upscale cover of one recent Green Fuse issue was chosen to illustrate an article on small mag. azines in the prestigious Writer's Digest. Green Fuse also is listed in several other trade magazines, including The Poet's Market and Fact Sheet Five. Bookpeople, an Oakland distributor for small presses, distributes Green Fuse nationally. The magazine is also available in Paris and London. And the poets represented are no longer limited to Sonoma County. Poets nationwide and around the world- Hungary, Costa Rica, Great Britain, Sweden, New Zealand, Australia, Cambodia submit over 1,000 poems a year, but the vision first set forth by Smith continues to shape the magazine

"The best poetry always surfaces," Boldt says, "and is timeless."

For many writers, Green Fuse continues to serve as a platform to voice not only environmental concerns, but currently hot political and social issues as well. According to Boldt, "Themes are not chosen, they arise." Popular themes have included land use in Costa Rica, U.S. involvement in Nicaragua, Vietnam veterans' crises, the effects of logging on the spotted owl, the Gulf War. But these polemic kinds of issues often evoke diatribes, not poetry.

"Green Fuse poems are well-crafted lyrical works that also get the message across comments associate editor Marianne Ware. "Green Fuse reflects my own philosophical and political leanings. But I want to be associated with the magazine if the poems were didactic, or if the message were more important than the craft, the poem. “It’s the message in the craft working together in harmony that singles out a green fuse poem.

Says associate editor, Karen Eberhart on future trends: “I’d love to see green fruits, really get big, become a first flight rate top flight environmental poetry magazine. 

Rest of article is missing….

SIDEBAR Rest of article is missing….
Sonoma Zine Scene

THE TRADITION of publishing small literary magazines in the Bay Area exploded in the late '50s in response to the elitism of the corporate publishing world in New York, which preferred its poets dead or academic preferably both at the same time.

Poets on the West Coast got tired of waiting for New York to notice them and created hundreds of small of magazines. Some of them, like Sonoma County's Green Fuse, are enduring. It evolved as a reaction to the ecological devastation sanctioned during the Reagan-era. Others rise up like randy weeds poking through pavement, only to quickly go to seed for lack of funds or energy.

Petaluma poet  Richard Benbrook's The Tomcat, and such other fine publications as First Leaves, Grandmother Spider, Loon, Backroads, Life of Crime, Windmill, Paper Pudding, and California Oranges all are history now.  And dozens of new punk and spoken-word 'zines with prosaic names like Wyrd Zar Joose, Neurotic Girl, Bread, and First Person have emerged and died like mayflies before the frost.

Poets who want to get down to the business end of writing may submit three to five typed poems (include a self- addressed stamped envelope to the following:

AVEC c/o Cydney Chadwick, Editor, P.O. Box 1059, Penngrove
95495. Published twice a year. Tends toward "language poetry" and avant-garde French and Russian translation.

Copperfield's Literary Magazine c/o Editor, 153 Kentucky St, Petaluma 94952. Published sporadically; year-round submissions. Free at all Copperfield's bookstores.

Cyanosis c/o Darin de Stefano, Editor, 318 Mendocino Ave., Suite 30, Santa Rosa 95401. Published very sporadically.

Green Fuse c/o Brian Boldt, Editor, 3365 Holland Drive, Santa Rosa 95404. $5 an issue (includes postage). Published twice a year. Submit poems by Jan. 15 and July 15.

Mother Earth Journal c/o Maureen Hurley, National Poetry Association …

Rest of article is missing…. Also Brian wrote a nasty letter to the editor because I mentioned Kay Ryan.

MIA Sonoma Mandala & Tight

APPROACHING THE ARGUMENT

APPROACHING THE ARGUMENT

Persistent as the flyswatter, 

already two wasps have fallen;

Sunday promises to be a three-wasp day.

The Protestant bells knell

extolling the piety that is Amsterdam,

and Cartesian logic of canals below sea-level:

who can outmaneuver the sand?

End of summer—the radiant enigma

of sun-warmed bricks yielding

to the icy vault of kitchen windows

still raises apparitions of endless hunger

droning toward our morning's commerce.

With the ceaseless clerical dance peculiar to wasps,

they bless unlikely converts: the empty yellow cup,

the slender black supplications of my pen

­on the familiar altar of paper.

Voraciously they worship stale food odors

with the same dogged zeal I tried to define love—

making such a nuisance of themselves,

the only alternative is a quick and simple death.

At first we tried to warn them; now we too

are indifferent to the tender compound equation

of a glass prison against the pane,

and the sudden freedom into open air.

Escape is temporary; they return,

and each according to the laws of nature,

we respond, sacrificing our daily wasps—

the flotsam of small corpses

in an encroaching sea

of stinging words.

6 Sept. 1992

 Amsterdam

Journal entry, 4/12/92, Green Fuse reading

4/12/92, Green Fuse reading. Yesterday, tired to the point of exhaustion, I left the Green Fuse reading at half-time, having not even read my poem. I just didn’t care anymore. Besides, there was a typo in it. I went home, nauseous from fatigue. I was in bed by 9:30 PM and I slept nearly 12 hours, and today, having slept nearly twice as long as I have on average for the past several nights, I have insomnia, watching movies into the wee hours. Tomorrow will be horrible. But channel 9 is playing movies until dawn. I called Valera Stupachenko in Leningrad, but no answer. The rule of thumb, if I can get through, he’s not at home.

Poet Ralph Smith obit, The Paper 10/25/89 (tearsheet)

HOUSE BY THE SEA, PT. BONITA

HOUSE BY THE SEA, PT. BONITA
     From paintings by El Meyer & Gail Packer
      Heredity is nothing more than stored environment.
           —Luther Burbank

For years, the Farallones hid the mouth of the Golden Gate
from explorers bearing glass beads and small gifts of death.
The Ohlones & Miwoks thought sailing ships were white birds
rising from the bottom of the sea. So ended
ten thousand years of dancing on the brink of the world.
A carnelian tooth chews on the miniscus of the horizon.
Clouds roil and twist like whitecaps or forgotten dreams
of cypresses testing the boundaries of air.
Redwing blackbirds whistle drills in the cattails
as limed buildings edge nervously into morning.
Ghosts inhabit sheets left out overnight on the clothesline
and the grape squeezes life from red franciscan strata.
An army of geese guard the dark continent.
Steam shimmers on the mirrored beach. Rare shells.
It's a matter of degree whether faith creates
experience, the padres shrugged as Indians died
of the common cold and smallpox. And for miles
the ground was littered with their bones.

7/89

1992 So We Might See in the Desert, CPITS anthology
1990 Poet News/ Sacramento Poetry Review
1989 Green Fuse
1984 California State Poetry Society, First Prize, and Dec. 1994 "Best of the Best" published poems

WILDCAT BEACH, BELTAINE 5/5/89

Wildcat Beach, Beltaine Silk & dye.

WILDCAT BEACH, BELTAINE

                                — for my students Nat & Erik

At Wildcat Beach I fill pockets with wax opals,

agates and moonstones—pieces of the fallen moon.

Five vultures wheel in a bright sky vibrating

against ruddy cliffs. The ocean eats the strand,

the night eats the sun. We lose track of time.

I point out equus, horsetail fern, ancestor of trees

when the dinosaurs were young. I despair:

so little time to teach the children about life cycles.

I yell at those who want to quit right in the middle of the road—

Five miles is forever. I feel like an ogre yelling at them.

Coddling won't do. No, that’s not it. I was never coddled.

So I tousle their heads, repack packs, clean skinned knees,

offer advice, feed them chocolate—these children I never had—

I am mother without being mother, father without having had one.

It's always a longer walk back, no matter what they say.

I am teacher. I am poet incanting words into true air.

We make a medicine wheel, divide into the four elements,

and writie poetry to the cardinal directions.

One crow commuting up the beach nods to me in flight.

On this side of the San Andreas Fault,

I come to understand the rest is illusion:

Those old generals who set the Gulf ablaze with oil

their dreams are cursed by flames of blue eels

writhing in shallow pools. Fire over water.

I dreamed Easter Island was a mathematical equation of the mind.

Two boys and I sit on the bluffs talking of neutron stars

and the desire for a simple life filled with ritual.

We watch a bonfire blaze on the opposite shore.

Nat says everything has a spirit—even that lupine bush.

They restore my faith, like the white deer who browse

beneath the stars. Recognizing an absence of ritual

in our lives, we seek something unbidden in the moonlight,

in the water and in the ancient eyes of fish.

5/5/89

KEEPING THE DEAD IN THEIR PLACE

KEEPING THE DEAD IN THEIR PLACE


Have the dead taken Hollywood by storm?
In the Pink Section I read Night of the Living Dead
boosts Nielsen Ratings and Joyce's The Dead
is now playing at the Clay Theatre.
The city of Colma is bursting with landed celebrities:
Emperor Norton, Lefty O'Doul, Ishi, Wyatt Erp, John Doe.
The funeral parlor where we put Mary Bianchi to rest
is now the Petaluma Police station.
Have the cops taken to arresting the dead
for petty crimes against life?
Loitering in the park after curfew without a parade permit,
or driving without a vehicle while under the influence of death?
The police have trouble keeping them behind bars.
They have no fingerprints, no ID, no known address.
What of the half-dead, the brain-dead, the undead,
those dead as a door knob, or those sleeping like the dead?
The one in the White House was secretly dead
for years but he had a good make-up artist.
Soon, they will be wanting voting rights
and you know what that leads to.
Ma Bell foresees a unique eleventh-hour monopoly
on long-distance surcharges to the dead.
The IRS is interested in repossessing hell bank notes
but doesn't stand a ghost of a chance.
American Express and Club Med are working out
the details of an earlybird pre-payment plan
so those who beat the rap can have their R & R
on some island hideaway. DOA Anon has sprung up
across the country. All these perks—
too late for poor old Mary Bianchi
who was a gardener right to the very end.


5/4/89

1990 Green Fuse  or 1989?

This is what happened when I read the Sunday paper...

LETTER TO MERIDEL

LETTER TO MERIDEL LESUEUER

In the sacred circle of Pachamama

time itself is transparent.

Temporary islands of whales

rise and fall like tectonic plates

or reed houses on Lake Titicaca.

At Machu Picchu the wind says

we're connected on a deeper level

than this earthly plane.

You say one doesn't recover from old age

but we are on that great cosmic curve the double helix.

The intihuacana is thirsty for chicha and flowers.

I dream of one rubber boot to cross the water,

and eyes painted on the bedroom of the sky.

Out of the debris, transformation.

Basements of the dead

turned into statements of the living.

Something is brewing in the five corners of the world.

Pachamama is crying but we are listening

for translations of wind in the ceiba trees.

The Cold War is ending with the children

reaching across borders and singing.

A golden eagle keens in the wind.

How quickly the night comes.

1989? 

1990 Green Fuse

1993 Mother Earth Journal

LETTER TO MERIDEL, l
this is a completely different poem

Lately, I’ve been touching the spines of your books
something speaking to me from afar
The wind says, the night sighs
we’re connected on a deeper level
than this earthly plane.
This thing called love
we never said in my family.
That the man killing me with his blue eyes
the way the glacier pulverizes stone
in its undertow of blue light called it love.

I am a mover of small rocks. 

I prefer the way of sky.
Is there nothing but emptiness ahead?

Outside of this grammar I write patriarchal nouns, verbs.
I don’t know how to pull the circle around me.
You say one doesn’t recover from old age.
It’s nymph cancer we all have
but we are on that great cosmic curve the double helix.
Invisible worms eat the rose at noon.
I don’t know how to crawl inside the structure of language.
The phallus I write with. 

On this earth we are the goddesses.
Man will destroy even himself for an idea.
Men lose their dreaming and forget why they’re live.

I dreamed that eyes were painted 

on the blue wall of the bedroom of the sky 

and the earth dam burst. The only way out was down.
I fill my house with food I don’t eat
and he hands me chocolate in a a broken bowl.
One rubber boot to cross the water.
Iguanas purring like cats.
Out of the debris, transformation.
The basements of the dead
are turned into into statements of the living.

I have been to Machu Picchu and left white stones.
On an island in Lake Titicaca
I lay in the sacred circle of Pacahmama
and understood time itself is transparent
Something is brewing in the five corners of the world.
Pachamama is crying but we are here listening
for translations of the wind.

I am on the brink, going back to Russia

to find something that was lost.
The Cold war is ending with the children
reaching across borders singing
We Are the World
We are the children on this coast.
Temporary islands of whales at Fort Ross
rise and fall like the tectonic plates.
No more otter. Just abalone and the salmon.
A golden eagle keens in the wind.
The coyotes howled.
How quickly the night comes.

BARKING UP THE WRONG TREE

BARKING UP THE WRONG TREE

Reina, a blind, dowager cat of 15,

who has learned to tell lies for more food

and has a paunch to prove her success,

ignores the catnip-stuffed mouse I bring her.

We can't tell her facts:

why it always rains outside each door

in the house at the same time, the dilemma

of eating tuna and the diminishing dolphin population,

or the effects of mercury poisoning.

Has it begun to manifest

its mad-hatterly ways in this idiot savant

well into second childhood?

Mornings, we find her upside down and drooling;

rubbing her whiskers and head ecstatically inside our shoes.

We make jokes about the narcotic effect of ripe shoes and laundry.

But when my new shoes are also

singled out for euphoric distinction,

I realize, slowly, how our conclusions are hampered

by our own anthropomorphic limitations.

It becomes clear, her need for scenting—

In cat terms, as we walk our daily rounds,

our shoes mark the outer boundaries of her territory.

Who'd have credited this blind old cat

with enough foresight to keep tabs on her realm—

She, who had us barking up the wrong tree all along?

10/15/1988  first draft june?
Berkeley

1995 CQ #22 California Quarterly
1991Poet Magazine, Fall issue
1990 Poetry USA
         Sparrow Grass
1989 Green Fuse
         A Night Full of Doves
         Outerbridge

Journal Entry, CPITS, Mendocino Oil Spill

2/9/1988 noon on Tuesday.

This place I have come to after sporadic attempts to write in the altered state with the 20th-century pressing upon me, expecting to learn tools to make managing time easier, I discover I have slowly begun to learn to spend less time on the struggle. Though I do not write daily or even weekly, I am not as concerned though I vowed to write more often.

Cecelia's workshop inspired me to find the original pleasures of writing.

Yesterday I spent rewriting my notes from the Mendocino offshore oil hearing. Tom shortened my piece by at least by 1/3. Much connective tissue was lost. I don’t have an original draft. Tom Roth does not have the vision and foresight that Nick Valentine has. Still, I think I will be pleased with the end result. He promises a double truck spread replete with photos. That's a big deal in the newspaper bizniz.

So, though I'm not writing, poetry every day, I am involved with language, whether it's teaching kids, or grant writing, or being a paparazzi.

Celia said: Consider all writing your work.

Though I have a grant due come on Thursday, a CAC artist in residency grant at Mark West school, and I've just barely begun to crack it, I'm not worried. The coast took first precedence.

I'm fighting back in the only way I know how, with media. Maybe I will do some more journalism. Though it makes me even busier than I already am.

Today I managed to pull 14 pages of writing from my journals. Some are poems already, others have decent material. I'm surprised by how much good material I do have. I tend to think of that my unconscious writing is not real writing. Because the Muses haven't properly tortured me enough until I have no choice but to write.

If I do more of this, will I have lots more poetry? People are all asking for work. From the birth of a poem to final product, it's such a slow process. I've had an extraordinarily publishing record as of late, not the rejections of course, I didn't send that many poems out but then I don't write much either.

I continue to send poems to small journals. My desire is to publish a single poem several times if it's good, it should be out there. I'm not of the single poem, single journal school. Poetry journals have such small print runs. Usually less than a thousand copies.

Cecelia Woloch wants more work for Blue Window. Green Fuse took some work and Creative Discourse took work as well. They took Tocaloma Road, and another piece—I think. On April 23rd, they want me to do a reading with David Best. I'm very pleased and excited to read with my old College of Marin friend.

I wonder how much my two valentine sold for at the Sonoma State art auction? I heard that  a lot of people attended. I was too sick to go myself and besides we were at a CPITS meeting at Point Bonita. John felt so sad that I had misted as my own art show, was as if it was my fault. It was the CPITS logo's fault. A brouhaha over a logo.

Anyway, time is pressing in on me and I feel I shall have to return to my grant if I want a job next year. Pure and simple.

LIKE SO MANY BOARD FEET

LIKE SO MANY BOARD FEET

My Irish grandmother said every house
needs a front duir and felling the oaks
brought bad luck because under golden boughs
was how ancient knowledge was passed on.
From beneath stones, the cycle
of small green claws grasp the sky,
taproot heartline—
sweet red sap, a coursing river
dying in a sea of shadows.
Felled patriarchs in a forced march
across fields in spring,
meteors in the burning night,
the final star gasp of diamond before carbon
returns to base minerals and ash—
how can they regenerate
when we've furrowed the earth
with houses, utility poles and roads?
I remember dreaming the lions
were coming, and the front door, too small
for the doorjam, swung free in the breeze.



89
88


1993 Mother Earth Journal
1990 Green Fuse

Ascii jumble. Must've revised it in 89got the line breaks right by guessing

IN MARY BIANCHI'S GARDEN

That young man who
thinking he knew something of cycles
blamed poor old Mary Bianchi
for depleting the soil
instead of his own failure
to understand its needs.
She, who raised two generations
from that same soil
including members of my family
improved the soil each year
with chickenshit
to nourish the chard
which in turn was used
to feed the chickens
who laid strong eggs
like our bones.
She knew about cycles and patterns.
When her first husband died
of mushroom poisoning
she married his brother
and continued her work
in the garden.

IN MARY BIANCHI'S GARDEN, II

That young man who

thinking he knew something of cycles

blamed poor Mary Bianchi

for depleting the soil

instead of his own failure

to understand its needs.

She, who raised two generations

from that same soil

including our family

improved the soil each year

with manure

to nourish the chard

which in turn was used

to feed the chickens

who laid strong eggs

like our bones.

She knew about cycles and patterns.

When her first husband died

of mushroom poisoning

she married his brother

& carried on in the garden.

6/87   (possibly 6/23)? 

1993 We Are Not Swans, with Cecelia Woloch

1991 Poet Magazine, Fall issue

1990 Tight

1989 Sculpture Gardens Review

        Green Fuse

        Gulf Stream

I wrote my first draft during my CAC AIL residency at Napa State Hospital.

This typed draft is from Napa V Poetry conference, Aug. or Sept.

RRWG reading Burbank Activity Center with David Fisher, Maureen Hurley

LIGHTING THE ELECTRIC FIRE

       Runners dressed in skins carried embers
       in moss-lined pouches to the next hearth.
        —Jane Walsh Reilly, 1893—1987

In the dark-paneled hall
of my grandmother's house,
mother-of-pearl light switchesó
the kind you push in & out,
resounded like sprung mouse traps
& light flooded the room.
The moment after one pushed in the switch,
wires inside the light bulb glowed red
like embers from earlier fires
to keep back the wolves and the night.

It was the woman's job
to keep the hearth fires lit.
To let it go out was to let death
come into the house,
my grandmother said.

Inside the heart of the light bulb,
between horn-like filaments,
beside the finely-coiled spring,
a smoldering spark from the first hearth
is locked inside because all atoms
are recycled except the ones we've split.

The white hair of my grandmother
as she bends to read
throws off its own aura of light.

8/1986
1992 Green Fuse
        Apostrofe! (in Ukrainian)
1986-88 Falling to Sea Level
1987 Marin Poetry Review
1986 More Than Words, CPITS Anthology

MANTLE

           —for Bob Kaufman
              April 18, 1925 to Jan 12, 1986

News travels slowly.
In the time it took God to make the earth
you died and a voice fell from the sky.
I've been looking for you
in each bent and ragged head
of those stumbling down Telegraph,
of those ranting in Brautigan Square,
of those who live in Market Street doorways.
They say Lenin's legs were blackened
when the shroud slipped off.
I saw the map of death on your face
as you wandered the outskirts of your city.
The same map in my mother's eyes
and in the faces of those in the streets
who followed me even in sleep
but who held my hand in the dark?

A crowd laughed at the screaming woman
whose hands beat against our car window
as a man dragged her into an alley.
Another woman, still drunk, comes over
and complains of lost car keys and stolen children.
And in that order.
The sky caught fire
and seven astronauts were swallowed
by a blue-mantled snail.
Film makers converge upon us,
their eyes taking in odd angles of light.
It's like watching Kennedy shot over and over
with Jackie piecing together bits of skull and memory
with ineffective hands.

Bees carry the skull of night back into the hive.
The dead have taken to scratching poems on the water.
Even if we scatter your ashes to the wind for ten years
and listen for lyrical translations from the other side
it still won't cleanse this place.
Ten years of silence is buried.
We had a vision but the map is lost.
Who will collect the messages?
We confuse pinholes of light
leaking from rotted buckets
for the ancient rain of stars.
In my dreams they are coming and the door won't lock.

While in exile, lean closer to the sun.
Become birdlike
until you land spread-eagled
on this bone of the word
and in this endless blue
your flexing soul
will be the sound deep space sings.

2/2/86      


1988 Green Fuse
1986-88 Falling to Sea Level
1987 San Francisco Bay Guardian, 2nd Prize
         Thread Winding the Loom CPITS

MANTO                                                                        

                                    —para Bob Kaufman

Las noticias viajan lentamente.

En el tiempo que le tomo a dios hacer la tierra

moriste y una voz cayo del cielo.

Te he buscado en cada cabeza agachada y harapienta

de los que tropiezan por la avenida Telegraph

de los que viven erl los zaguanes de la calle Market.

Dicein que 1as piernas de Lenin se ennegrecieron

cuando se deslizó el ataúd.

Vi el mapa de la muerte en tu cara

mientras vagabas por las afueras de tu ciudad.

El mismo mapa en los ojos de mi madre

y en las caras de aquellos en la calle

que me seguían incluso en el sueño

pero ¿quién me cogió la mano en la oscuridad?

La muchedumbre se rió de la mujer gritona

cuyas manos golpedban nuestro parabrisas

mientras un hombre la arrastraba hacia un callejón.

Otra mujer, todavía borracha, viene para

quejarse de las llaves perdidas y los niños robados.

El cielo se encendió y siete astronautas fueron tragados

por un caracol de mano azul.

Cineastes convergen sobre nosotros

sus ojos toman originales ángulos de luz .

Es como mirar a Kennedy tiroteado una y otra vez

mientras Jackie junta pedazos de la calavera

y la memoria con manos inefectivas.

Las abeias llevan la calavera de la noche a la colmena.

Los muertos ya están granando sus poemas en el agua.

Aunque esparéramos tus cenizas al viento por diez años

esperando traducciones líricas del otro lado

ni así se limpiaría este lugar.

Diez años de silencio están enterrados.

Teníamos una visión pero se perdió el mapa.

¿Quién reunirá los mensajes? Confundimos los agujeros de luz

goteando de las cubetas podridas

con la lluvia antigua de las estrellas.

Vienen en mis sueños y la puerta no se podrá cerrar.

En el destierro, inclínate al sol.

Hazte como pájaro

hasta que aterrices extendido en este hueso del mundo

en este azul sin  fin tu alma desdoblada

será el sonido que canta el espacio profundo.

2/2/86                        —traducción John Oliver Simon y Juvenal Acosta                                           

1986-88 Falling to Sea Level

RETURN FLIGHT

RETURN FLIGHT

My grandmother, they planted lilies

at the foot of your bed

before I understood the meaning of loss.

A chill in the air puts summer to rest.

White against the moon, an owl takes flight

across the valley & the echo of his cry

scatters light from the stars.

To the dancers, we leave our feathers of return flight.

The small candles of barn owl feathers drift down

from the moon's edge to light the way for your feet.

The slow breathing of soil before the frost

leaves a faint trail like the undeciphered tracks of mice in snow.

This is why we dance on the graves of our grandmothers.

The earth spreads sonorous wings over you,

shakes rubies from her blood

& your long dark hair tumbles swift like a waterfall

until it turns white in the garden of your grandchildren.

& the night horses who pasture in your hair

all turned east, toward that softer danger, the sun.

At dawn the white rooster crows over sand dunes,

leaving an echo almost tasted on the tongue.

He crows, Gallo, gallo, gallo blanco.

The web that connects us moves slowly.

Wind in the cottonwoods marks a passage of time.

When my best friend was killed by a horse,

you said, “Think of all the death in the trees

and in the fields in fall.”

The rooster cried, “My insides return to earth

so that my life may continue,”

before the axe swung.

My grandmother, now I know the earth receives us.

She watches the flowers of her children catch fire in the wind.

She kindles our slow bones so they too

will send roots down deep & drink from the stream.

She stands at the lintel with arms open wide,

waiting for us to return home

so she can close the door.

The return to earth is a quiet song

when water trickles down after the storm.

8/27/83

rev. 86
this was from reading three grandfather poems in a New Mexico magazine, by Rudolfo Anayar, Estévan Arellano, and EA Mares. I later changed it to reflect my grandmother.

1990 Red Bluff Daily News, July 23
1988 Green Fuse
1986-88 Falling to Sea Level
1986 Under the Bridge of Silence
1983 Across the Generations


VUELO DE VUELTA/RETURN FLIGHT

Mi abuelo, plantaron los lirios  
al pie de tu cama  
antes de que yo entendiera  
el sentido de la pérdida.  
El aíre frio entierra al verano.

Blanco contra la luna, un buho alza el vuelo  
a través de la valle y el eco de su grito  
esparce la luz de las estrellas.

A los bailiadores dejamos nuestras plumas del vuelo de vuelta.  
Las velitas de plumas de buho flotan a la deriva  
desde el filo de la luna para aluzar el camino de tus pies.

El aliento despacio del suelo ante la escarcha  
deja huellas ligeras como rastros indecifrados  
de los ratones en la nieve.  
Por eso bailamos en las tumbas de nuestros abuelos.

La tierra extiende alas sonor as sobre tí,  
sacude los rubís de su sangre  
y tus cabellos largos v negros se caen rápida como cascada  
hasta volverse blancos en los jardines de tus nietos.

Y los caballos de noche, que pastorean en tus cabellos  
todos miraban hacia el oriente—
hacia ese peligro mas suave, el sol.

En el alba, el gallo blanco cacarea sobre la arena  
dejando un eco que casi se saborea en la lengua.  
Cacarea, "gallo, gallo, gallo blanco."

La tela que nos relaciona se mueve despacio.  
El viento en los álamos marca un pasaje del tiempo.

Cuando mi mejor amiga la mató un caballo,  
dijiste, piensa en toda la muerte en los árboles  
y en los campos del otono.

El gallo gritaba, "Mis adentros regresan a la tierra  
para que la viad continúe," antes de la hacha se cayera.

Mi abuelo, yo sé ahora que la tierra nos recibe.  
Mira las flores de sus hijos encenderse en el viento.  
Lentamente incendia nuestros huesos para que ellos también  
envíen las raices hasta lo profundo y beban del corriente.  

Se para en el dinltel con los brazos abiertos  
esperando hasta que volvamos  
para que cierre la puerta.

La vuelta a la tierra es una canción quieta  
cuando el agua discurre después de ia tormenta.
  —traduccion John Oliver Simon

1986-88 Falling to Sea Level