Christian Burkhardt: Almost Amish

While weeding through an old suitcase full of my grandmother's yellowed newspaper clippings, I found an article on an old friend, a neighbor I used to know a long time ago. A dark clipping of Christian Burkhardt & his horse Brandy pulling a custom racing cart along the backroads of the San Geronimo Valley—a familiar sight during the 1970s.

Christian and I used to go on long trail rides over rough  fire roads starting out from Forest Knolls. One time we went all the way to Mt. Tamalpais along the San Geronimo Ridge, to Alpine Dam, via the the Meadow Club, in his two-wheeled racing sulky prototype made from a bicycle, wire mesh, and aluminum strips drilled out with big holes (to keep the cart light).

Or sometimes we'd go up the Lagunitas fire roads near Kent Lake along Bolinas Ridge, to Bolinas Mesa, and onto what is now called the Palomarin Trail. We'd trot past Double Point, Bass Lake, Olema, etc. The miles flew by, the open air stung our cheeks, we'd pack a lunch and take off down the open road, not knowing where we'd end up.

I taught Christian the English names of plants. I pointed out a primitive plant, Equus, I'd say, pointing to Brandy's tail, horsetail fern (Equisetum). He'd reply in German: wassercandlen. His father was a famous botanist, they were born in Germany, so it made sense that Christian would know the German names of plants. English was his second language.

Christian was super smart and had many odd notions. He was part eccentric, part geek, and almost Amish. He wanted to harken back to a simpler time that never was. Christian once built an entire Model A Ford from scratch, because he could. But he wouldn't drive it. He was somewhat steampunk'd decades before it was reinvented. But then the entire family was most original in thought and manner. The saying, They broke the mold when....applied to the Burkhardts—all of them. Like the Amish people he admired, Christian wanted to be simple, he wanted to be plain. In fact, he did eventually apprentice with the Pennsylvania Amish community.

Christian Burkhardt and Brandy with his prototype buggy made of bicycle parts.

Christian lived with his parents and grannie on a house on a knoll that his father Hans had designed, made of river stone, cement, and floors with radiant heat. Hans loved the trees, and managed to build his house around them without resorting to scorched earth practices. Christian built an elaborate treehouse in a Douglas fir, with cathedral windows, electricity, a record player and a telescope (much to the dismay of Stephanie Stone's parents). That gave Christian quite a reputation. The Stones invested in bedroom curtains.

I don't know what part of Germany the Burkhardts hailed from, but Christian's grannie didn't speak a word of English and she too was pretty eccentric. I remember being shocked when Christian told me that when she was a young girl, his grannie was an ardent fan of Hitler; when he came to their village, she broke her arm falling off a chair cheering for him. It probably saved her life. 

When I was a teenager, I'd found a Nazi dagger up our hill, buried in the dirt above our spring. Our neighbor, German Consul, Old Man Latendorf must've been hiding refugee Germans in the woods. The story goes, when things got too hot, and he too went into hiding, my Irish grandfather stepped in as acting German Consul. First, my high school math teacher, Archie Williams, shook Hitler's hand after he won the Olympics gold medal with Jesse Owens, and now Grannie Burkhardt?

When we were cleaning out my grandmother's house last month, my uncle found the old Nazi dagger, but it was so rusted, he threw it out. I should've saved it, the little black and white enamel swastica was still recognizable, but I didn't have the heart to keep it. It was tainted with too much history. I wasn't expecting it to resurrect and intersect itself here in this blog. But I digress...

Western view from Mt. Barnabe toward Camp Taylor. we grew up on the other side. —Wiki

Back to our backroad explorations. Christian Burkhardt and I discovered that we could cover amazing distances in the racing sulky, much farther than if we were riding astride our own horses. Brandy, a dark mahogany bay Morgan with black points, a white sock, and a star on his forehead, could trot for hours. My horse had died a few years before, so I was truly horseless, no longer riding for Rafter L Ranches, and I welcomed the chance to travel my favorite ridges again.

On the way home from the Mt. Tam ride, we bit off way more than we could chew: we were late leaving Mt. Tam, it was so glorious at the top. A friend of mine, Dale Walsh, was working at the fire lookout, he invited us up and we spent the afternoon gazing out over the ridges of the Bay Area.

Coming back around Alpine Lake to the Meadow Club, we crossed the Fairfax-Bolinas Road, to pick up our fire road home, but took a wrong turn, and ended up on the top of Pine Mountain at sunset. Fantastic views of Mt. Wittenberg, Elephant Mountain, Big Rock RIdge. But we were on the wrong ridge that divided the middle arm of Kent Lake like a peninsula.

I told Christian we needed to veer to the right, and take what looked like a chaparral-lined goat track, but he wanted to stick to the main fire road. He said it made more sense. There was no arguing with him. He held the reins, so...off we trotted to the west. Then towards the south. Wrong way. I threw a fit and got us to turn back towards San Geronimo. But we discovered that there was a fence in the way. We lost valuable time searching for a way back though the fence as we didn't want to backtrack all the way to the Meadow Club. We were also running out of daylight.



We needed to get onto the right fire road that followed the crest of San Geronimo Ridge paralleling Sir Francis Drake Boulevard (the old Northwestern Pacific Railroad bed). I found a portugee gate of sorts, a mend in the fence; we were able to lift the sulky over the barbed wire, and sneak Brandy through a gap in the fence. I laid my vest over the lower wires so he could see in order to step over the treacherous wire. Good thing it was a full harvest moon to light our way. Otherwise we would've had to spend the entire night on the ridge.

After the second summit, I was never so glad to see the first sure landmark, the pygmy sargent cypress forest, and the ghostly serpentine outcroppings. (The San Geronimo Ridge was either Marin Municipal Water District watershed, or privately held ranch lands in those days, now the Gary Giacomini Open Space Preserve is accessible via the Bay Area Ridge Trail. See photos at the Bay Area Hiker's blog. A recent post is on Trailhiker's blog.)

To download this PDF of San Geronimo Ridge, go to MCPOS

I can't remember where we came down off the ridge, but I think it was by De La Montanya's place—we called it the deer camp road (there was an old deer camp on the ridge overlooking the lake, it ran into East Sylvestris fire road and dead ended at Meadow Way in San Geronimo. Of course none of us ever knew that the names of fire roads, or that they even had names. Google hindsight is a wondrous thing.

It was far too dark to follow the ridge to Forest Knolls even under a full moon. To come down off the ridge down Tamarack, or by the Nielsen's place on Resaca Road would have been positively suicidal in the dark. By the time we reached Arroyo Road, it was well after midnight. I was so cold, I wanted to trot alongside the sulky, but I had such painful chillblains, I could barely walk. I was never so glad to get home.

We didn't know it at the time, but when we didn't return home by darkfall, the families began to worry. Christian's father, Hans had sent the sheriff out looking for us, we were gone so long. Even my grandmother was worried, and she never worried much about me coming home after dark. The horse always brought me home. Christian caught hell for being out so late—they thought we'd been injured or killed. No cellphones or GPS back in those days, let alone, access to topo maps, we really were miles from civilization.

Poor Christian was socially gauche (as most adolescent boys are). He was always the little kid who lived down the road. He used to tag along after us when we went out riding. About the only thing we had in common was a love of horses.

I used to give him rides to SF State when we were attending college there during 1974-75. He helped to pay for gas and bridge fare so I was glad for his company as it was a long commute from Forest Knolls to Stonestown.

Christian didn't know his own strength. One time he twisted the door handle right off my old '58 Volvo panel van, not realizing it was locked. But he was also a mechanical genius, so he welded on a new shank and fixed it, not quite as good as new. But close. The handle drooped a bit. I offered to teach him to drive but he steadfastly refused. He didn't want to have anything to do with combustion engines whereas I was always under the hood trying to keep the damned car running.

Christian's father Hans, a botanist, was a pioneer in the process of cloning orchids. He'd hybridize and divide the orchid buds with a scalpel and put them in test tubes filled with coconut water. The orchid clones had to be constantly agitated in order to grow. There was a riot of rare orchids blooming all throughout their house. Christian's mother, Hannah, a quiet dark-haired woman of otherworldly charm, was his lab assistant. She was probably a doctor as well. There was much I didn't know about the Burkhardts.

The Burkhardts left the San Geronimo Valley and moved to a remote valley along the Noyo River during the late 1970s or early 80s. Their nearest address was Sanctuary Station, an unscheduled freight stop on the Northwestern Pacific Railroad freight line, now California Western Railroad line. The Skunk Train took them 20 miles to Willits or to Fort Bragg for provisions, but they were self-sufficient. The fire road into Sanctuary Station and Camp Nine was impassable during the wet season. I visited Christian a few times, as an activist poet friend of mine, Mary Norbert Korte, a former Dominican nun, was their nearest neighbor, and we held several rather wild California Poets in the Schools conferences at Mary's place.

The California Western Railroad, a Mendocino County heritage railroad that parallels the convoluted narrow Highway 20 (Fort Bragg-Willits Road). The CWR runs 40 miles along the Noyo River and Pudding Creek, crossing 30 bridges and trestles, and two tunnels. Northspur, 11 miles north of Comptche, on the confluence of the North Fork of the Noyo River, is the only watering hole, about half-way from Willits. Otherwise there's not much by the way of civilization in the canyon.—Wiki

Dr. Hans Burkhardt was an environmental analyst for Mendocino County, which was in the midst of clearcutting wars, disastrous for the Noyo River canyon. Hans' efforts led to the formation of the Mendocino County Forest Advisory Committee. He wrote a booklet, “Maximizing Forest Productivity” that outlined sound forest practices to sustain a healthy vibrant industry, but corporate forest owners branded him an extremist, along with marbled murrelets, northern spotted owls, EarthFirsters and Judi Bari.

The steam and diesel-powered Skunk Train, on the California Western Railroad.   —Wiki

When I was visiting the Burkhardts, poor Hans was nearly felled by a redtail hawk who mistook his shiny bald pate for dinner. Hans managed to live to a ripe old age of 75, fighting the good fight against big lumber. He's been gone ten years now. The Mendocino woods have lost a champion.

I heard that Brandy was killed by a car...but I'm not sure if that's true or not. I imagine it happened while Christian was driving one of his custom buggies. It would've utterly devastated Christian as he absolutely doted on that horse. I envision Christian living on that homestead deep in the Noyo forest, inventing all sorts of useful and harebrained contraptions. But our madcap buggy rides was surely the stuff of dreams.

PRAYER FLAGS

PRAYER FLAGS

 

Once we lived along the coast, gypsies in vans, 

within spitting distance of the ocean. 

The pygmy forest was our bed, the ocean, our voice.

It's as if memory itself has turned to fiction. 

And I forgot about the sea caves lacing the bluffs. 

but I made an ink drawing, so I know I was there.

At the blowhole, the masculine sea punishes the earth. 

The sheer drop into tide pools, a mesmerizing vortex. 

Once we helped potter Sasha Makovkin unload his kiln, 

followed by a wild party of roast goat and lots of vodka,

we yelled nostrovya! beneath a full moon 

as we baptized new dinnerware fresh from the inferno. 

I once found a prophylactic wrapper wedged in the fence. 

Why not here? I envied those orgasms 

as if they still lingered in the salt air.

 

I rub shoulders with the inarticulate ghosts of memory,

and see the town through the translation of an old lens.

I pass the Mendocino Hotel, remembering long nights at the bar, 

where we gathered after readings and talked about poetry 

until closing. I want to slip back in time, 

have coffee at Café Beaujolais, but the old haunts, 

like the Loft, a water-tower bookstore—are all gone. 

Once we read poems lying down on that crazy tilted floor 

wondering if the coast winds might knock us all down.

Poets are already bent, so it mattered not. 

 

A litany of names tumbles from memory like rough beach stones: 

Bill Bradd, Leonard Cirino, Tom Robideaux, Steve Torre,

Jess River, Devreaux Baker,  Sharon Doubiago—

they were my true teachers. A reading at the McCallum House. 

Rainy Day Women: Karin Faulkner, Sharon Doubiago,

Robin Rule, Cindy Frank, Mary Norbert Körte, 

Judith Tannembaum, and Marnie Purple. Me.

Poets lending mellifluous voices to the storm.

Walking the headlands, a poem is stuck in my mouth,

so lonely, yet so lovely. But it’s a breech-birth. 

I find myself looking for Sharon's blue van, 

but it's the end of summer, she's already gone up the coast.

Burdened by the past, I can’t remember what was said,                                

But we knew all the For Sale sign was a death knell.                                    

None of us could afford the gifts in the shops,                                              

as poetry carried a vow of poverty, reverent                                                  

as prayer flags luffing in the wind. 

I learn the lesson anew: everything is lost in translation. 

Memory and poetry. Especially poetry.

 

Mendocino, 10/6/95, 

rev. 2024

Teaching Notes: Mendocino Woodlands Journal: translations, rainy day women

Mendocino Woodlands, October 6, 1995

Twenty years ago, my first boyfriend, Bob Hamilton turned me towards the bay window of Zachim's Gallery on Main Street, placed nasturtiums and yellow calendula beneath my chin, tilted my rainhat back, turned me towards my reflection in the window, and said, This is how you will look at 40 or 50. We will come back and remember this day.

I couldn't imagine my life without him, for I still believed in love. The gray sea reflected in the window, but his potters thumbs were already molding the clay of my belly. I stood in front of that bay window, and inhaled the punishing odor of nasturtiums in autumn. The sea practiced nuances of turquoise and jade beneath a cloudy sky.

Two decades later, I stand in front of that same bay window and remember what was said, and not said. In the bookstore, I take solace in fingering the book spines in the poetry section, just seeing the names of all my friends in print is comforting. I am homesick, but there is nothing much to return home to.

The other night I told Karin Faulkner I was homesick. I am teaching nearly 200 teenagers from Windsor poetry and silk painting at the Mendocino Woodlands.

Karin's presence, dinner and a beer helped to settle me. The bartender treated us at the pub. Karin and I go out to see Dangerous Minds in Fort Bragg and we are weeping, Do not go gentle. Karin said, We poets are always on the edge of tears.

I understand my students better after the movie, and regain some center by sleeping at her cabin. The last time I slept here in the pygmy forest, years ago, was with Oleg from the Ukraine.

I walk the Mendocino Headlands, no use walking the streets, I have no use for most of what fills the stores. I am not a tourist. I pass the Mendocino Hotel, and remember nights at the bar, where we all gathered after readings and talked about poetry until closing. Sharon Doubiago, Leonard Cirino, Bill Bradd, Jesse River, Devereau Baker, and Tom Robedeaux. Time was more gentle then.

I still want to sip coffee at the Café Beaujolais, but The Loft bookstore, an converted water tower, is now a bakery. Once, at The Loft, Leonard, Tom and I read poems on the crazily tilting floor. Poets are already a bit tilted, so it mattered not.

Leonard Cirino is well represented in the bookstore. I heard Tom Robideaux and Devereaux Baker split up and she went to Texas. Tom, I don't know where he went.

The For Sale sign, another death knell to the past. None of us can afford most of what's's being sold in the shops. As if poetry automatically carried its silent vow of poverty like a prayer flag against the wind. Mendocino's become too rich for most blood. People support new Irish knit sweaters with no patina of age, no shiny cuffs.

Once we lived along this coast like gypsies, sleeping within speaking distance of the ocean. We were part of the migration of artisans that began in the 1960s. The pygmy forest became our bed. Once we came up to help Sasha Makovkin unload his kiln, followed by a wild party of roast goat and vodka toasts as we baptized the new dinnerware fresh from the inferno.

Did that all really happen to me? It's as if memory itself had become fiction. And I could have forgotten all about it, and the sea caves in the middle of the bluff. but I drew a picture of it so I know I was there.

The masculine sea is pounding punishing the earth's vulva. The sheer drop into the sea astounds me. A prophylactic package is wedged in a groove on the fence railing. Why not here? I am envious of someone else's orgasms as if it still lingered in the salt air.


Walking the headlands, a poem is stuck, so alone, so lonely, yet so lovely. A breechbirth. I find myself looking for Sharon Doubiago's blue van, but it's no longer summer, she's headed up the coast.

Already I am rubbing shoulders with memory, the ghost haunting me. My eyes are doing funny things, I can only see the town as it was nearly a quarter of a century ago. The gallery where we once read poetry.

Sharon Doubiago's hair, like golden wings engulfing her face. And how her son, Danny stood there in front of their small cabin, just out of high school about to go off and play football for the Dallas Cowboys that bronze golden-haired manchild, and his slender sister, Shawn standing shyly behind him, deerlike, a carbon copy clone of her mother.

Memory is tricky for it tends to want to tell a story other than its own, and we are left with disembodied images. Ghosts.

And I am remembering the ones who stayed lost, how my childhood friend came here to lick her wounds, and raise a child. She was a friend from when horses came before boys, but later, the drugs took the reins. That all happened before the summer of love. She followed the bands who shaped the substance of a decade.

Karin's voice still seeps in from some of the old readings we gave at the McCallum House. We were the rainy day women: Karin Faulkner, Sharon Doubiago, Robin Rule, Cindy Frank, Mary Norbert Körte, Judith Tannembaum, and Marnie Purple. We were the poets lending our mellifluous voices to the wind.

Hunger gnaws at me but I deny myself food. The full moon is pulling on my blood, ambivalence choking my will. This place of uneasiness unleashes a savage, untamed and wordless poetry. 

Overburdened by memory, I am unable to capture what was said, what was remembered. Everything is always in translation. Even poetry.

Teaching Notes: Mendocino Woodlands Journal: slip of the tongue

Mendocino Woodlands, October 6, 1995

At Mendocino Woodlands, the stoner kids want to know if I've dropped acid. And I say, But of course, before I realize what I have done. Oops! I am the adult here. I say, Look at the decades I grew up in. It was different times. Jerry Garcia lived right down the road for me as did Carlos Santana.

I backpedal and preach: Now as an artist, it find it's important to have all of my brain online. He's pleased that an adult is being straightforward with him, so maybe it's not all a mistake after all.

I coax poetry and art from my students. We cover the buildings with silk paintings, self-portraits. Will I look back upon this moment 20 years from now? The ghosts of the past are whispering urgent lines, waiting for lips by which to speak. (Ironically it is true 20 years later I am looking back as I type up this note.)

I switch from Spanish to English with my students. In a polyglot of tellings, we find approximations to shape our thoughts into transmittable format. Imperfect as it is, it's all that we have to go by.

Teaching Notes: Mendocino Woodlands Journal: Learning to let go

Mendocino Woodlands, October 5, 1995

At the Mendocino Woodlands Jeff is not teaching, he is learning to let go, as we gather 200 ninth graders and staff, to bond, and to create a community. We are a disembodied, homeless high school lost in the woods.

Without a home, we come to the redwoods, a place where Jeff once lived, and worked, and we come here to do work, to build a community, a tribe, while he tries to forget what connects him to that hospital bed in the burn ward where his stepbrother pays the price for a drink, with his life. The nurses warned Jeff that the 10th day is always the worst, that's when the infection sets in. He counts the days with minute precision.

Jeff chooses his students, plays frisbee, does bunk patrol, he emcees, he runs the camp with the benevolent hand, never revealing the anguish he must face. He had said to me earlier, I might as well go where I am most useful, with the kids. I hate all that waiting. What good is it? He waits for the final phone call from the hospital to bring him the news.

We talk about our past, our families, our ancestors and we paint self-portraits. I cover the side of the lodge with portraits. The wall is becoming the focal point for each student, who brings a friend over to see the latest developments.

We cover the outside of the entire massive south wall with silk. The great silk wall of student faces glistens luminous in the early morning light, we are bonding. Students tell me of their secrets and write them down. One student from South Africa learns to compare the good life, supported by dark hands, whether black or Mexican. Another writes about the addicted father. The issues of abandonment arises again and and again.

They talk about all the houses they've lived in, the house we call home, and the ones we still dream of as home. I learned of the story of the boy whose father kidnapped him, took him to Yugoslavia, until the war force them home. He wears a Stetson hat, writes of secrets, he compares it to government. Always we deal with what passes for truth, and what we know not to be true. Subtext and context.

All of humanity's atrocities are manifest in this small tribal gathering in the deep woods. We share the stories, we bond together, while Jeff is learning to let go.

Teaching Notes: Mendocino Woodlands Journal, 3 Oct. OJ Simpson

Mendocino Woodlands, October 5, 1995

During class, despite the fact that we're nearly completely cut off from the world, we learned that O.J. Simpson was acquitted. The shock wave goes through the group. Nicole, my name is Nicole… said a student. He ought to be behind bars. Someone else said Nicole's parents have custody of the children. Imagine believing that O.J. Simpson murdered your daughter and now he wants the children back? 

Tonight my voice begins to fail me; in the business of teaching, it's an occupational hazards. To lose one's voice. A metaphor for the poet attempting to restore authentic voice to her students. I need to protect my throat more. Only two more classes left. It's been an intense week.

The great silk wall nears completion, it is stunning to see so many self-portraits on silk, each one so individualistic. Most of the poetry that the students wrote, was worthless but what to expect with only one session in ninth grade? Developing the poetic voice takes time. I had to let go of my expectations. 

I'm having to fight with kids in order to get them to work, but I also need to realize that I don't have a teacher backup, and I'm holding their attention for three hours on and on my own. It's different than teaching at the Luther Burbank Center because kids want to be there. We are all reeling under the verdict. Something has murdered trust. These children I teach, we are one tribe. The poetry of rage over injustice is on their lips.

Mendocino offshore Oil protest, for Ocean Sanctuary 2/11/88 (photos) tearsheets

THE WEST SONOMA COUNTY PAPER FEB. 11 -17, 1988 

Glory, glory, Mendocino
"Double bubble, oil and trouble" in Fort Bragg

BY MAUREEN HURLEY

It was enough to make a grown man cry, and many did just that after two days of impassioned testimony against the Department of the Interior's Mineral Management Services (MMS) proposed sale of Offshore Oil Lease #91 in Mendocino and Humboldt counties. In the end, a somewhat shaken MMS panel returned to Washington, D.C., to deliver the very clear message from the North Coast: no offshore oil drilling lease, no compromise, no offshore oil drilling here.

Opponents to the drilling say that proposed offshore oil wells would endanger miles of pristine coastline from Humboldt to Monterey counties. The 6.5-pound Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) has predicted a 73% chance of oil spills of 1000 barrels or more. In addition to oil spills, said the report, acid rain, air pollution, toxic mud, tankers, refineries, a pipeline, and helicopters buzzing the coast every 20 minutes would be some of the by-products of the proposed oil rigs. Because most of the rigs (19) are slated for the Sonoma-Mendocino border at Point Arena, virtually all of Sonoma's coastline could be adversely affected, thus potentially threatening commercial fishing, tourism, and lumber industries—all this for an estimated two- to six-week national supply of oil.

Thanks to the continued lobbying from individuals and the California congressional contingency, proposed Offshore Oil Lease #91 has been deferred until after the next presidential election. Two "Ocean Sanctuary" bills have been introduced in Congress. The more stringent measure would ban drilling anywhere in California coastal waters.

For the first time in North Coast history, politicians, lawyers, doctors—Ph.D.'s and M.D.'s—loggers, fishermen, shopkeepers, homesteaders, Native Americans, artists, tourists, and kids presented a united front. People from every segment of the community were lustily cheering in unanimous agreement for "No offshore oil drilling rigs on the North Coast Ever!" The perceived threat to the pristine North Coast created a unity unlike anything the MMS has ever seen before—and a formidable foe it is.

From across the state, people came to testify against the proposed sale of oil lease #91. In the conservative Mendocino County lumber town of Fort Bragg, Eagle's Hall, which legally seats 450, had standing room only, with a long waiting line outside for the entire two days of die hearing.

Wednesday's fiery hearing continued into the wee hours and was extended to Thursday in an attempt to accommodate all the speakers. Before the hearing began, over 750 had signed up to testify and the ranks swelled to an estimated 1700, but at the end, the MMS panel cut off the hearings at 210 speakers Only two speakers—both paid lobbyists within the oil industry—spoke in favor of offshore oil drilling.

So many letters arrived for the hearing that the local post office was unable to deliver them all. Still, letters from as far away as Canada and telegrams from across the nation were entered into the record as public testimony.

By Thursday morning, over 1700 people had signed up to speak against MMS's proposed lease and hundreds more came to lend visible support. A "burned-out" Alex Watt, an MMS geologist collecting signatures of those still wanting to testify, said he's never seen anything like it.

It wasn't business as usual in Fort Bragg, which midweek in winter is ordinarily a tad on the slow side. Media-oriented shopkeepers experienced a mini-business boom as typographers, printers, and photocopiers were pressed into action. Camera stores kept special late hours for rush-developing yards of film shot by "paparazzi" and spectators alike. Major network and local media people worked elbow to elbow sharing information and leads. Many local inkeepers offered low rates to the protesters. Even so, there was a mad flurry for housing and many slept on couches and floors in private homes.

60s style, 80s organization

If was like a return to the protest movements of the 60s hut now enhanced with the organization of the 80s, one speaker said. Kids and other protesters marched from the town of Mendocino to Fort Bragg singing and carrying signs. Smash hits at the noon rally on Wednesday were Ukiah native Holly Near and summer resident Bonnie Raitt singing gospel to a crowd of more than 2000, and the Hit and Run Comedy. Theatre musicians Doug Nunn and Harry Roth presenting a resurrected version of "Duke of Oil." Every politician worth his or her salt got on the bandwagon, including Assemblyman Dan Hauser and Sonoma County Supervisor Ernie Carpenter; but noticeably absent from the political circle was U.S. Representative Doug Bosco, who was walking Iowa streets for presidential hopeful Richard Gephardt. Bosco was not a popular figure at the hearing.

Meanwhile, inside the packed Eagle's Hall, people from all walks of life took a verbal shotgun to the MMS's Draft Environmental Impact Statement. Many who testified were experts in their fields. Contractor and organizer Dan Tower pointed out "one small, minor niggling detail" in the DEIS report, the location of the San Andreas Fault in relation to the proposed rigs. He said, "Now, I'm a builder, and it might seem contradictory that I'm against this lease, but this land's too unstable, even for geologic testing."

"What's sub-lethal?"

Notes: offshore oil hearings in Fort Bragg, Mendocino County, journal

Note bene:. 2/9/88 Yesterday I spent rewriting my notes from the Mendocino offshore oil hearing. Tom Roth shortened my piece by at least by 1/3. 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. I lost steam half way through the hearings, so these are my warty raw notes. A lot of work here that didn’t get used in the final story. Placeholders. And the final draft of the story I wrote, is lost. I am bummed.  Offshore Oil protest, for Ocean Sanctuary. 

• 
  

The idea of offshore oil enrages me enough to want to do a story on it for the Paper. Many of us from Sonoma County are here testifying at the hearings. People form as far away as Oregon and LA are here to protest. So many moving testimonials, there such a connectedness with the Mendocino community I’d forgotten I had. And I think of how much time I’ve spent here. Bob and I spent so many weekends at Pat Wall’s house on Simpson Lane, or sleeping in the VW van along the coast, our a home away from home. Mendocino is home, a home where I will never live. And I know so many people here. I stayed overnight with Jim and Judy Tarbell who put me up for the weekend.

So far, 1400 people have signed up to testify at the hearings. And there are 1500 more people waiting outside with Holly Near and Bonnie Raitt entertaining them. The event is being televised to 600 more people crammed inside another building. I have never seen this many people in Fort Bragg all at once.

What a floorshow, a group is singing gospel. Wally Dale and Jeanne, intrepid beachcombers, said, We watched Southern California go down the drain, and I am determined it’s not gonna happen here.

Rachel Binah reads some quotes from former secretary Udall and Angela Lansbury: For heaven’s sake, save our coast!

It’s a packed hall, they get a standing encore. Rusty Norvell, a former Mendocino teacher, says “three years ago we were goldfish. Now we’re sharks and we smell blood.” He cited facts as to what oil pollution did to the fish population. “Hell, we’re being fed the same BS today. How does it feel? Oil is a four letter word.” He said the oil word.

People shot holes right left and center into the studies offered by the panel from the DEIS.A spokesperson for the salmon industry talked about the 14 million dollar industry and how this was going to negatively affect them. This is the first time ever that the loggers, the hippies and the fisherman have presented a united front against the aggressors. History was being made right here in this room.

A builder, Dan Tower, pointed out a minor detail, the San Andreas Fault running right through the middle of the proposed oil field. Never good for oil derricks, he said.

The Point Reyes Bird Observatory spokesperson said, only oil spills larger than 1000 barrels were predicted. In Texas alone, there were smaller 1000 barrel spills that killed nearly 11,000 birds. You don’t need a large oil spill in order to kill all the birds. Surge oil spills are actually more damaging than sheet spills. We have fierce wave action here, unlike in Galveston. There’s a cumulative input pointing out the myriad flaws in the DEIS proposal, their general lack of assessment as to what could go wrong. They said that 95% of the coastal bay wetlands from Big Sur to Humboldt will be lost. You fail to give adequate assessment to that.

The next speaker said, “I am a rare, endangered species, I am a Republican this is the first time in my life I’ve felt such a sense of shame for my party. I will vote as a Republican against #91 and I hope you will find the time to join me.” I think his name was Robert Raymond. I have photos.

To drive from Mendocino to SF it’s an area of coast that can offer man some sense of grandeur and wonder. The hypothetical proposal is the equivalent of harvesting the gray whales to extinction. Where do you go on vacation if we destroy this area? This is dedicated to Sala Burton whose spirit continues to protect the ocean.

The Ocean Sanctuary spokesperson said, “there have been 5000 spills for 30 day’s worth of oil supply for the nation. Those sub-lethal spills of 1000 barrels or more is a death sentence. The world has only one California coast. Continued vigilance is required. No lease sale, no oil development—this is the peoples alternative choice.

Ocean Fresh seafood products spokesperson said, The ocean is our greatest natural resource we cannot destroy it. A north coast alternative energy source is the ocean itself, with the waves produce 30,000 mw in energy per year.

Artists who draw inspiration from this unique coastal community, and earn their livelihood from it, got up to speak. Judith Kessler, AKA Redwing, said, we ain’t gonna let the drill them drill for oil under the sea. The crowd picks up the chant.

Dick Bell of cable access Channel 22, Bodega Bay, said the ocean is not linear. If its health is threatened , then sustainability drops too far, you can’t recover it. If I didn’t know better I’d say they were blind to the debt to oil because it is unconscionable what they are asking. Do we risk survival of the planet to pay off a campaign bill? Just say no to # 91.

(I must’ve done an Opening of the mouth column as well.)

Osha Dean said, I speak on behalf of the oceans and the earth, the corners of the mouth, businesses and that sublethal impact which you speak of. And he presented an oil spill scenario to the panel. We shall never surrender. We shall never surrender, he said.

Ann Harlow from the Ecology Center of Southern California said others have already spoken of the cumulative effect of oil derricks off the coast. We have only 20 to 40 days worth of oil down there, is it worth it? Simple conservation could save two times that amount. She mentioned the logging industry, air pollution, rampant Southern California cancer, the negative effects on the food chain. “We are poisoning the sea, the sea will inevitably poison us,” said Jacques Cousteau. We are are fighting for human life here.

Someone else, Robert Jangochian? sp., addressed the negative impact of increased air traffic, air lift helicopters, and airplane surveillance that the presence of the rigs will bring. He reminded the panel, remember the Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969? It was an unmitigated disaster. Our coast is vastly different and there’s less chance of recovery here—the severity of the weather, the inaccessibility of the coastline, and the extreme tidal fluctuations are not the same as in Southern California. How can species, or the ocean possibly recover when there’s 100% mortality rate? Not to mention that the drilling mods are toxic. The local currents are treacherous and unpredictable. The entire DEIS plan is vague.

Jim ? said he was standing in for Novell, representing the small businessmen of Sonoma County. He said if we have squandered efforts for renewable resources, everything else will go, but the oil derricks will be there for hundreds of yearss.

Dorothy Tompkin from the local Audubon Society, said the snowy plover was not included in the DEIS survey and it’s an endangered species. Few shorebird species nest in Northern California they need sandy beaches, and at present, there are nine bars pairs north of Fort Bragg and only 125 pairs on the entire Mendocino Coast. This is certain extinction for them. Then there is the endangered peregrine falcon—less than half drop of crude oil on an eggshell results in 100% mortality rate. In addition, there is grave danger to the nesting birds of the Farallones and to the Point Reyes National Seashore. The brown pelican eggshells are also too thin. there are no less than ten species of endangered offshore birds including the tufted puff and they’re only 250 birds left in the state. The oil industry has already had a high impact on the mortality of 47 species of non-nesting shorebirds. And the DEIS excluded the marsh birds from the study—what about the herons and the egrets? We are looking at multiple extinction of the species across-the-board. Those daily helicopters round trips x8 from Santa Rosa will introduce a chronic hydrocarbon presence. Not to mention disrupting the entire breeding cycle of the shorebirds.

The testimonials went on from 9 AM to 2 AM— straight through the night—and picked up again the next day—from 8 AM to 3 PM. They were reminded that they had three minutes each and nothing more and they needed to submit their comments also in writing. And helicopters kept arriving throughout the night.

Greg Chatham instructor of marine biology, said that the DEIS study was poorly written, poorly organized and contra-indicatory. It didn’t even meet the basic EPA standard guidelines, citing that thr monthly maximum spillage of 48 ppm, was closer to 72 ppm—with that many barrels, the actual air pollution is grossly underestimated. all those helicopter trips don’t take into account, the pristine air quality, make the impact proportionally more severe, in several orders of magnitude greater than regional levels.

He said the DEIS study does not document the cumulative impact of small spills. The USCG maximum allowed pollution contradicts the DEIS study. In Santa Barbara, there are 4 to 5 small spills every day. This will have an extreme environmental impact. There seems to be little concern over the excessive hundred parts per billion—and the inevitable destruction of the local fisheries. The plans to build major pipelines from Fort Bragg to Willits through the Jackson State Forest clear-cutting hundreds of acres of trees will be lost. Your documents are inconsistent with the facts.

Dr. Gregory Menken addressed what would happen if there was very large oil spill, he said that 47% of all oil spills are of the smaller ones—equally destructive by their frequency. He cites a pollution report on the Prudhoe Bay findings, and how the pollution was everywhere—in the air, in the water, and also what about the low conduct of the oil business—how it seriously disregards environmental laws with 100s of ongoing violations. He said that the existing environmental laws are not strong enough, and further oil exploitation should not be considered until the oil companies comply with local, state, and federal laws—and adhere to the EPA guidelines.

Baseline data is needed. The US Department of the Interior guidelines are more lenient than the EPA guidelines. the US Department of Interior allows 3 million oil regulations 100 tons of pollutants per rig, per year. Emissions from offshore rigs has created extremely poor air quality in Alaska.

Raven Early Grow, a travel agent and writer from Point Arena, took on the shoddy track record of the Western Oil and Gas Association. 

The glam looks of the panel some 12 hours into the hearing, was poignant, but the energy of the crowd was undaunted. They said, we want to speak all night long. Peggy Rawlins brings up the Boston Tea Party as a reference point, and she says, go tell Ronnie and the guys we will do whatever is necessary to stop this travesty. I’m going to pick up my spear to protect the underwater marine sanctuary at the Cordell Banks, off Point Reyes.

Dr. Robert Schumaker and Dr. Atomio engineer of Mineral Management spoke.

Alice Walker gives a personal testimony about the uniqueness of the area to artists.She says, we only get three minutes to speak. I’d like to see you try and stop us with a three minute speech, she said.

Lynne Ables a Mendocino performing arts company, a New York refugee talked about thr mixed demographics of Mendocino County, referring to the Southern California refugees. How important the artist tourist industry is for the survival of so many businesses. So many standing ovations for those speaking up against this atrocity.

Lynne Ables pointed out that the Native American impact was not included on the report, or on the salmon fishing industry. What about the Indians? They were right. There is a groundswell rooting squad of hooting and hissing and foot stopping with lots of drums. Like it or not.

Peggy Rawlins from Lytton Springs Inn said, Pollution knows no political boundaries and if you think the sale of lease # 91 doesn’t include the Sonoma Coast, you’ve got another thing Comin. Someone hold up a sign MM Board, are you bored yet? Good! WOMB, the women of Mendocino Bay incant a Macbeth scene with double trouble oil and bubble. A Presbyterian choir sang in original piece by Sonoma resident.

Maggie O’Rourke, attorney gave a pro oil testimony, she is non-local and within the business of oil, only two por-oil testimonies, but not everyone is on board, the MMB panel is busy actually taking notes.

There are a lot of Mendocino high school students testifying from the next generation, kids bang their skateboards in appreciation.

Fables, oil it’s a dirty business. They hand out shells to the MMS panel, and shout No oil! No oil! We can’t hear you! No oil.

A couple holding hands, approach the mic, and say, We were married yesterday (congratulations from the crowd) and the first part of my honeymoon I am spending it here with you to defend our home. We were on our way to Yosemite and turned around and came back. We are the newly married and we are against oil.

Someone offers the panel flat balloons that say why not save the sea? Point Arena, with one of the most treacherous coast lines, is ground zero. Alan Niven, publisher in Point Arena talks about the San Andreas Fault and he brings in photos of the massive storm waves that destroyed the pier of Point Arena in 1981. xxx

A Native American woman of Apache descent, Ochena Haskell said you’re not dealing with just another dumb Indian here. I am Mescalero Apache and Ute from Colorado. I am Lakota Sioux and Six Nations. The Department of the Interior used to be the Department of War. The Native American religious freedom act allows me to worship this sacred place. She closes with, Stick this up your kind of pipe and smoke, it she said. There’s more drums and chanting and flowers are given out to the people.

The owners and operators of local businesses speak amid much laughter. I don’t need to be politically or spiritually correct, I am angry. Kim Bluewater, sings, People gonna rise up. People abdicate their time slots to give her more time. She talked about acid rain and the ozone.

Barry Vogel asks we want to hear from you, the panel. Commander at Allan US Coast Guard Long Beach talk to us about pollution. A riot nearly broke out.

He pressed his point, Dick Wildermen of the MMS, we want to know your qualifications. How many offshore options impacts have you analyzed, is it more than one, 10, 100? Or 2 to 3 per year Willdermen nearly lost and requests a five-minute break, and cuts the mic.

Sue Miller Whitaker from Eugene? calls them flakcatchers, “Let the man speak. I’m beginning to worry about the trees we’re going to lose, just to type up this nonsense.”

Careful stewardship and perseverance is needed said the Physicians for Social Responsibility. Mendocino promotes both physical and mental health and there’s a gross understatement that the report is filled with inaccuracies—it’s well documented.

Luis Korn said alternative power sources need to be explored. He talks about Nicaragua, and the military being on trial.

A fisherman points out that There is no study on the shellfish.

The marine study from fixed wing aircraft, concluding that there will be no impact, is not deductive reasoning. If I were to give it a grade I’d give it a D. And I am not being unbiased. The DEIS report is a political, not a scientific statement.

Mary Norbert Körte talks about the difference between effect and affect, citing the DEIS misuse of the words. She brings down the house. She asks, is this any way to run a government? to a cheering crowd. The poets have arrived.

The Alchemy Contra singers belt out, Glory glory Mendocino, to a standing ovation David Berent, a proxy clerk, said, maybe we should sell rags to the tourists so they can use them to wipe the oil off their shoes. Take some free advice from a doctor. This is psychically numbing.

Bob Klapsale painted a dire picture of oil rigs infesting the coast. He said that the Pomo Indians too are testifying in letters, they are testifying.We have been here 10,000 years. 

Kashia Pomo leader Lauren Smith said, I’ve had a few dreams and the ocean has been good to us. The drilling would ruin us. From the ocean we get good energy, free food, we get our ceremonies, we get our worship. There’s nothing for the younger generation. Some of the dreams are saying a lot of demonstrations. A dream I had, there was no more gas, no more oil. Spiritual energy from the ocean will be thrown off by the ocean. The destruction of the ocean is not good energy, and more and more people won’t sit around, they’ll get involved. We have to protect what we have. Make good energy out of it. It is better than anger. You become like them. We will do prayers for you she said, pass that along.Our people, we will do ceremonies in Kashia, dancing for good energy. I feel we could keep them out, the ocean works in mysterious ways. Tell everyone that you see that our people will always be working towards better things. Let’s work together and stay as one. We will do the ceremonies in Kashia so that you won’t feel alone. And we will be thinking about all of you.

Over our heads someone depicts a picture of bones. Whenever Damocles sat in judgment, the sharp two-edged sword hung over his head by a thread.

Listen, if you can’t keep a promise why do you keep making them? We can’t go forward until all the testimonies have been received, we cannot go forward.

I spent the night at Jim and Judy Tarbell’s in Casper, exhausted. I remember nothing of it.  Next day, the hearings opened with a play, a Pomo Indian prayer, and rap. Someone asks, did you see the sunset, the full moon on the bluff. Pure magic. A good omen.

Steven Antler, an attorney from Fort Bragg, said this is the most corrupt government in US history. Yesterday‘s wedding balloons are slightly wilted. Sequoia Greenfield talks about the ducks.

Gabriel Cheney says no oil. Bevin, from Ukiah, a former coordinator from Save Warm Springs (I worked with him and many of the Pomo elders, relocating the special reeds they needed to make their baskets before the Warm Springs dam went in) spoke of Native traditions.

Alex Watt collected 1700 signatures. Ron Smoley from Fort Bragg spoke. Rachel Binah, an organizer, got a standing ovation with Judy Walters. Someone vowed to skateboard all the way to Washington, DC, if needs be.

Someone proclaimed the land the Republic of Mendocino, said, I will buy up all the land at $25 an acre, and give it back to the Indians. The panel was gifted with seaweed and shells. Elinor Llewellyn it doesn’t say what it is some thing developers aqua fine talk about chemicals and trying to get rid of the stuff Marvin Gilbert, the Cowardly Lion of Oz, said the the tinman needs oil to grease his joints.

Other speakers included Dr. Don Hahn, Lindy Peters KMFBFM, Antonia Lamb, Ann and Ashley Holden, Russell Lowe, Senator Allan Cranston, Richard Charter all spoke, But I was long past comprehending what anyone was saying, other than it was an overwhelming landslide that no one, literally no one out of the 3000 or so of us were for the offshore oil platform. At the end, the weary panelist stood up, and were gifted with T-shirts that were emblazoned with I survived the Mendocino oil hearings and they went on their way. We had averted disaster.

SAILING INTO DARKNESS, ll

SAILING INTO DARKNESS, ll

Maybe it's the way the San Andreas Fault grinds at the coast
or how ropes of sunlight fall on marine haze, or the wind.
Maybe it's the rancher's wife murdered by her husband
who comes to sit among these tombs sprouting small milk teeth
in crooked rows. I hear women whispering inside those trunks
of cypress growing from Manchester to Point Area.
They came here from Canada, Ireland, and Germany,
with high hopes but their dead built cities on this lonely coast.
The wind followed them across oceans, forests and prairies
to the edge of the continent. It licked beneath doors,
between cracks and floorboards, stirring lamp flames
and passion until the air was ablaze.

Like a rotted tooth, a charred headboard with no name
has lost its place in line. Monuments to young girls
spared the grief of motherhood. "Charity is beloved."
Her mother feeling the loss, climbed down to join her.
Piper's mother slipped into the same womb six years later.
Jennie McMullin's twins Paulie and Ellie born and died the same day.
I think, RH negative. Then all the miscarriages.
She quit naming them after that. What more did Samuel want?
At my age, she followed the sixth babe back into earth.
The graveyard dissolves into the silence of blackberries.
Lichen gains a toehold on carved letters.
Mother, beloved father. Infant, unnamed.
How many names for darkness?
The Bishop family, squeezed in four separate plots
between Clays, Munroes and McFarlins--
still search for kin among stones and roots.

If you lie down, snake-like, and listen with your ribs
you can almost hear the earth shift. I say almost--
the way a rattlesnake, blind in summer moult "hears"
with heat sensors and minute vibrations felt through the skin;
strikes blind at anything that comes too close.
Marsh grass whipped into a frenzy catches fire
as sun and sundog slide down the mandarin throat of ocean.
Brazen beauty mark of Venus. Shy, distant Regulus.
Yesterday, Suzanne, who told me the story of the rancher's wife
drove out to the beach. New moon in the old moon's arms.
They found her wearing her best clothes and jewelry--
Not even a note. None of us knew what troubled her.
Tongues of fog lick traces of blue from the sky.
No graves or names to mark the three babies I gave back.
Fingers of wind tangle my hair, invisible ropes tighten,
pulling me toward those gleaming cypress trunks
until the hands of men who planted them are all over me
and cacophony of wind pulls me down into pale earth;
this harvest I never asked for.

1986? or 1987
rev. 6/87,1988, 6/89, 6/91

Garcia River, Point Arena

Notes for SAILING INTO DARKNESS

Journal entry, The anniversary of James Wright’s death

Last night I was in San Francisco staying in Gene Ruggles’ guest bedroom. I slept in the room reserved for John Logan, and I read a postcard poem of Maui and his visit to WS Merwin‘s place. He wrote how the angle of ceiling to cliff affected the color of the sky. 

Today is the anniversary of James Wright’s death. And I haven’t written a poem in ages. All these lines are bouncing and now I’m imagining that I’m sitting in Albion where I saw the water snake swimming along the bottom of the ditch full of standing water. I had never seen a snake slide along the bottom of water before. He poked his head tiny head up for a breath, looking like a stick with a tiny forked tongue flittering, testing the breeze.

And Leonard Cirino told me how the pygmy forest soil doesn’t perk water so Leonard‘s house was red tagged last summer. The well made everyone sick. Now the new pump delivers water to the heart of the house. But the ground holds water, it can’t shake the memory of  marine terraces. It dreams of the ocean pounding along its shore instead the soft winds and irregular tides rustling through the cypress needles and the ground sighs with the faint color of bleached bones fallen from the ancient trees.

Found on a scrap of paper, undated, later coerced into a poem on 3/25/85. So I’ll post it there for now.

ARC Sept/Oct, 1983 4 photos front page: Mike Tuggle, CA Oranges, Ft Ross, kids, fence & rock

Letter from Leonard Cirino

Dear Maureen,        April 12, 1982

Ah the rain I wish it would end but that's not the forecast. I traded some work hauling manure for some strawberry and lettuce starts so there will be something ready by June. This is the poem that is an "answer to your one about my eye. Read it and tell me what you think. Please have someone let me know for sure about May 10 at the reading date because I always make plans ahead so 1 can't change them. I have a whole lot of new work since december at Garbo's so 1 won't be repeating any poems if anyone asks they will all be rather new or at least never read in Sonoma before. These damn typewriter keys keep getting and hitting in the wrong order so I hope you can make sense of this letter. All is well except for my truck which still is without transmission and no transportation. Costs me less money as I am very poor these days—no job at all—I quit dishwashing because of the ten-mile one-way trip and the minimum wage. Are you going to Pt Townsend this summer? I might go if I could  take my dog and find a ride. Hint Hint. Must close now and write other letters hope to see you next month or sooner if you want to visit. Get Simone and you up here sometime soon.
       love,

                      Leonard

Leonard Cirino, LeePerron, Karla Andersdatter reading

No date but probably 5/82

ODE TO LEONARD CIRINO

ODE TO A MAN GOING OUT INTO THE WILDERNESS
                         —for Leonard Cirino

My car threads the road,

weaving continents of light and dark 

in the primordial gloom of Navarro canyon 

& I arrive to your empty house—

windows like shuttered eyes.

This ground won't perk. 

The well, polluted by fastidious raccoons 

made everyone sick—

The new pump delivers water 

like the heart of an athlete to an empty house. 

The outhouse & its damp library—

Kenyon Review, paper curled back into bark. 

At night, deer still come to browse

and lick salt from the wood.

This ground won't perk. 

It can't shake loose the past. 

Marine terraces, full moons, high tides, 

clam beds & absolution. 

It wants the salmon promise, 

red roe in uterine sand. 

Instead, rhododendrons squander 

spring's promise in a pygmy forest of cypress,

pencil thin, and a thousand years old. 

My feet crushing years with each step—

the cause and effect of minty air and bleached bone.

What unreconciled Oedipus in you

was avenged by the slow digging of your hands-—

one eye at a time, to banish light forever?

What do you dream of?

& like Lew Welch, 

you've gone into the forest, 

following the voices of the shaman wind.

Deeper in the heart, the earth

will translate your arrival 

where the junta inside you 

cannot stop your singing or your vision.

Later, you will complain—

not able to judge distance, with your one eye. 

Do you dream of eating your children? 

Victor Jarra's hands were cut off by the junta 

but poetry was his revenge.

Mother's Day
5/81
rev. 88

see also

Poet Leonard Cirino (1943-2012)

A POTTER'S FIELD—FOR BETTY WALL

A POTTER'S FIELD
    —for Betty Wall, Dec 25, 1918 to Jan 30,1980

Betty, today you lost your footing
and you fell like a stone into the void
You took in the amniotic ocean
you, who never learned to swim,
you, who loved the sea,

Today, only the ocean
carries the clay chill of death
Only the ocean
is the spawning ground of death
Only the ocean that spawned life,
today, took back a life.

We swim in seminal fluid
We bathe in an amniotic bath
We are born in it
We run rivers to the sea
on a rip tide that churns to land.

We threw your ashes to the wind
from a clay pot that you made
back to the forest. In spring,
rhododendrons will bloom,
and we will pick huckleberries
when you return home,


2/2/1980, rev. 2016
added 10/16
mostly reconstructed from my journal notes, I later found the typed version, below.

SUNSHINE: THE POET AT 4

SUNSHINE

gather up all the sunshine in the room
& put it in a bowl
& put it outside on the deck
you can cut the sunshine in two
& have two bowls full
& you could take off the lid
& let the sunshine out any time you want
What if the bowl had a hole in it?
would it burn a hole in the floor?
If you took sunshine out in a bucket
could you cut it in half?
& give them sun?
then I'll hammer it back again
The moon never gets cut in half
it's the sun that's white
it's white, and it's little.

1/1980
Fort Bragg, Mendocino

 (a found poem of sorts: I was writing on Pat & Betty Wall's deck in Fort Bragg, and Micaela Carr's four-year-old son, Mateo, came over to tell me all about the sun. So I wrote it down. Sometimes you have to be ready to reassemble the parts.  It's written on 1/1/1980 but I'm not positive of the date. I remember it was a warm day, so the date surprises me.)