Press Democrat, Poets give voice to verse

RRWG flyer, Jan. 1981, Garbo's, Guerneville, Maureen Hurley, George Englander, Dan Propper

Fashion photo shoot ca . 1981 with Richard Salzman

Fashion photo shoot ca . 1981 with Richard Salzman tickling the ivories.

My editor at The Paper gave me a strange photo assignment on fashion. I used my poetry students from El Molino High School as models, but he ran this photo of me instead. I wound up keeping the very expensive clothes—as it was so uncharacteristic of me to dress that way, I never wore them again. I was literally stepping out of character. I loved the shoes. I never bought another $70 pair of flats again. The outfit cost more than what I earned in three months.

I don't know when this was taken, so I'm filing it as Jan 1, 1981

added, written 4/24/2016

IN A BLUE CUP

In a Blue Cup

Humming
Don't worry.
Something flows up quickly like milk in a blue...
Don't worry.
Yellow skin, yellow sky,
The sailors have all gone home.
These are not islands plotted carefully along the jetstream.
There are mangos in the air.
Suspended flesh
Soft pressure points;
Blue cups.

Blue cast of milk teeth
Puppy's tongue curled when the axe came down, 

green mangos.
Tulip petals crushed at my feet,
Purple dust of stamens covering my hands.
Poor circulation got him dead.

The axe was kinder.
Don't worry, mango skin
Something is flowing in a blue cup. 

(This is a different poem...)

Talk
Neck shadows
Align along the spine like stars
Suckle on milk-white pressure points 

Quick, grasp the warble,
The end of a laugh.

Spinal curve
Uneven steps like layers of chocolate cake
Parched earth
Lizard heat
And the slow alignment of softer pressure points.

Love
Spaces in between
Toes entrenched
Yes, I.

No date, published in the Sonoma County Stump, Oct. 18, 1981

Short Poems from 1981 (I think)

Most of these need full dates and some may be written earlier than 1981. I didn't date most of these early pieces, didn't really consider them poems.

BELOW SPIRIT ROCK

The loam is ankle deep
Bay laurel roots follow crevices
all the way down to water
Stripped of leaves, the barren tree
is a sign of the long drought

81

CRICKETS

Cricket sound

cicada on a branch

why does he rub those papery legs together?

he's rubbing time and sun with his hind legs

he's rubbing for the sun,

the moon,

the trees,

the wind.

6/81



DEAD PINE IN FOG

Trees whisper
the sound of water
Creeks gurgle
across tone deaf stones
Far off, a child's laughter.

1981

DUSK FLIGHT

bird without feathers

pushing swiftness to the moon

pulling clouds across the sky

in one fell swoop

you dive into the black pool of night

where the moon floats in the shallows

insects disappear into the darkness of your mouth

you swallow the moon

at dusk your high-pitched squeak

can be heard

6.81

FISHNET

The red glass float from the fisherman's net
rides the Japanese current past the Russian coast
and the Bering Straits to California
where it glistens like a jewel in the sand.
Making the journey down the coastline of your body,
my breasts cradle your blind mouth.
The essence of the sea spills into kelp hair.
From the net, your hand uncovers precious stones
and the arching dolphins at the crest of the wave
rise in the wind like love's cry.

FOR THE FISH IN MY LIFE

A minnow sleeps in my bed
and noses at the watery quilt.
As I climb into bed,
concentric ripples form
where, toe first, I slip in and under.
I'm careful not to disturb him.
All night long, the fish thrashes
and turns as I sleep
in a bed of soft stone.
If I turn over too fast,
will he be thrown from the bed,
or drown from lack of water?


10/81

MANNA

From the whirlwind of a passing truck

the robin's body luffed and raised

like a leaf; orange breast flashing

the dawn back into the sky.

I wanted to stop the car, mend

the random fluttering of small wings

in their strange and useless flight,

& turn this tiny teacher of Icarus

back toward the sun.

81

MOON SNAIL

Aboard this crowded raft,
I make strange love to
a river of foetal cave fish.

Once, I was the night mist
and in the moonlight,
a shiny trail of snail spittle
led to the corners of my mouth
as I swallowed you.

Thinking I was a wolf,
you fled into burrows
but I was a mountain
and the ground where you hid
was my body.

I make love to friends.
Their thin hands passing over the raft
find you hidden among the blankets.
You ask me for forgiveness.
All I can offer you is rotted flesh
rocking gently on its dark mooring.


10/81

THIS KISS

This maiden voyage of tongues,
Sleek suckle of cavorting seals
Undulating in kelp beds,
Capriciously nesting,
And antlered,
Rutting under the gibbous moon
Not the watery abyss
Licking shriveled toes and lips
Left too long in the bath

7/29/81 Pt Townsend

rev. 4/87

WORDS FROM THE PERSIAN:

WORDS FROM THE PERSIAN:  

1. When things get unbearable

I repeat Leonard’s line

over and over like a mantra:

Words from the Persian:

limes, sherbet,

                  pajamas,

                           paradise.

Imagining a dark world without them.

2. Later, I told him how his lines

bring me small comfort.

­He said, It’s wonderful,

but I never wrote it.  

DATE? 1981-82?

rev. 7.7.1994

Snail and carp drawings 1979 ot 80?

Whatever notebooks these drawings were from are long gone. These were bad xerox copies pasted onto my hand-calligraphed poetry folder. which held my "published" (keeper) work from 1978 to 1980. They could even be from 1978, or earlier.

 What you can't see from the greyed and worn xerox is that they were exquisitely rendered, almost 3-D. The coated paper still reeks of chemicals. I'm surprised they lasted this long.

The fish, probably borrowed from a Japanese woodblock, became a model for a raku fish I made in the mid 1970s. Or the raku fish I made in the 70s, inspired the drawing. Either way, I was intrigued by how the parts fit together so elegantly—especially the tail.

The snail was a garden culprit. I was drawing him as he was perched on my finger. I became enamored of the comic slobbery houndog quality of his jowls. After I was done admiring him, I let him go.

added 3/18

THE LAST POETRY READING

collaborative poem, Maureen Hurley, Donna Champion, published in the Obligatory Hug, 7/1984

The Close of the Year (prose) Trailside Killer

The  Close  of the Year (prose)

Below me  a  fog lake slowly wells up aid roils  over like milk flowing  down  the  hillsides in a slow dance that bathes the trees with dew and moisture on the slopes  of Gilliam Ridge. The peaks  of the Cedars  and the  Red Slide jut out of angular winter shadow like pyramids catching the sun.

Below me, hikers climb out of the  ravines of Austin Creek, and a chainsaw buzzes, a woodpecker calls to her mate, and somewhere far off, an early lamb bleats for its mother. Somewhere to  the  south near Point Reyes a killer is stalking unwary hikers and the corpses are an unholy offering in a place such as this that cries "no more blood".

A bloodthirsty killer who  knows these woods, who somehow lures young women away from the relative safety of numbers, and places precise bullet holes in their heads. Why this? That these woods have come to harbor such evil? The sunshine is so warm. I take off my woolen clothing, my bare skin and feet are stroked by feeble winter sun. My eyes grow heavy with sleep. Should I also expect danger from that intruder this far north?

The body of fog roils toward me like spores furring on excrement and three ravens  cut across its surface making their own kind of offering to the land.

The sun in the southernmost position of the sky needs fire, not blood, no bone-fires  to bring it back from solstice. I hear the  ticking of the clock. The ticking of the clock... a line from one of my earlier poems.

I learn to settle down and rest comfortably like a cat among lines of my own choosing. I inherit them, I, who disavowed them, they keep coming back in all of their angular beauty—an untamed vision to haunt me—like those nameless faces of those murdered women of Point Reyes.

A roaring sound is heard. Does the fog roar through the trees as it passes through? or is the fog a lake, and do the the waves lapping up against the shore of the ridge roar? or is it the eyeless souls and mouthless tongues of all those murdered women of Point Reyes?

12/22/1980
added 7/17, minor revision
A reference to the Trailside Killer

• THE CLOSE OF THE YEAR
• Winter Solstice, 1980

THE CLOSE OF THE YEAR

THE CLOSE OF THE YEAR

Below us, the fog lake rises
on the slopes of Gilliam Ridge.
It wells up and boils over like milk
and flows down the sides in a slow dance,
bathing the trees with dew and moisture.
The peaks of the Cedars and  Red Slide
juts out of angular winter shadow
like pyramids catching the sun.

Below us, hikers climb out of the ravines
of Austin Creek Park
and a chainsaw buzzes.
a woodpecker calls to her mate,
and somewhere, far off, a lamb bleats for its mother.

Somewhere, to the south, near Point Reyes
a killer is stalking.
The sunshine is so warm.
we take off our woolen clothing.
Our bare skin and feet stroked by the glow
of winter sunlight.
Our eyes grow heavy with sleep.

The body of fog, like fur on dogshit, rolls towards us,
and three ravens slice across its surface
making their own kind of offering to the land.
The sun, in the southernmost acre of the sky,
needs no-blood, no bonfires
to bring it back from winter solstice.

I hear the ticking of the clock.
The ticking of the clock...
I repeat a line from one of my earlier poems.
I learn to settle down  like a cat among lines
of my own choosing.
They keep coming back to haunt me
like those nameless faces
of the murdered women of Point Reyes.

A roaring sound is heard.
Does the fog roar through trees as it passes through?

Winter Solstice
1980

One of the few poems of 1980 that I actually dated. There's also a reference to the Trailside Killer,  this is one version. I can't find a decent copy of the other version. Added 11/16 minor revisions & line breaks. There's also a prose version, probably a first draft for this poem, Winter Solstice, 1980.

Winter Solstice, 1980

Our feet brush through the pine needles, one last time before they settle back to earth. In the sunlight we can't help but reach toward love. The blood roars like an ocean through your veins and a fog shrouds my belly. It sings through my veins as a fog enters my mouth and I feel your pulse against my lips as you come loose from your moorings. It's 5, no, 7 counts and you sink into oblivion. And the ethereal mist seep between my teeth and flows across the wilderness of our bodies. I think of those 5 or 7 million dead lying on my belly, and of those poor murdered women of Point Reyes, as soft grey brain matter sinks back into the earth. Our bodies warm to winter sunlight and we reach to hold each other as we celebrate the returning of the sun.

Winter Solstice 1980
Austin Creek Park
added 7/17, revised
*a reference to the Trailside Killer
THE CLOSE OF THE YEAR

Petaluma Argus Courier Sonoma Arts Council, Word Art

In the Garden

In the Garden

She was at the bar ordering the Calistoga water when she saw him. It seems that their paths were always crossing these days. She suspected it was a mutual sabotage, neither one willing to let go of the other.

She knew he might be at Garbo's Niteclub but decided to go out anyway. She was tired of avoiding all the places he might have gone to. There weren't many places a single woman could go to have a quiet drink and dance off the day's tensions.

Besides, her friends were there. Should she give up her friendships just because he was there? It was a public place. He didn't have his name stamped in every corner the way a dog leaves his scent when staking out territory. She had just as much right to be there as he did.

She didn't want it to seem like she was avoiding him, even though she was. If she made it obvious, then he would think she was mad at him and then a confrontation would follow, and she would cry a little, making a firm resolution to never see him again. But she knew she could never keep that promise.

She had tried that one before, God knows she had tried. It was after she had lost the baby. It was probably for the best, but her arms ached to hold that baby. She wanted to put that baby in his arms and see his face often as he held his firstborn son. She often thought it was a son. She never knew. Didn't want to know. Somehow the guessing was always more satisfying.

They had tried to make a clean break of it, the moving on that would eventually need to happen, or so he said. What she hadn't counted on was falling in love with him. It was the last thing she needed. Her marriage of five years was breaking up. His being there to help her through the adjustment period, and surprise pregnancy on top of that, was more than she could handle.

No, she went into this relationship clear eyed, and in control of her feelings. Who knows why the blind Seraphim aims at random with his deadly arrows. Arrows to the heart. More like porcupine quill's. Can't pull them out. Not even with pliers. Sometimes they work their way out, emerging on the other side of pierced flesh.

When she knew she had been struck, she no longer resisted. She figured it was fate and she may as well just accept it. She certainly didn't want to be tied down just yet. She wanted to sample some freedom. All those men out there with extended cocks waiting to be tried. Nonetheless, it had happened.

Maybe she was a prime candidate not having been in love for a couple of years. Her husband and she lived together for reasons of convenience. They thought they were surviving in a tough world that require two people banded together against the common enemy.

And when there was a cease-fire, she popped her head out of the manhole and discovered there wasn't an enemy in sight. There was never an enemy out there

The enemy existed all right, it was right there in her bed, sleeping with her at night, feeding her by day. The common enemy raised its snake eye and hissed her name. She fled in terror, right into the open arms of this man sitting at the bar as she waited for her drink.

He walked over to where she was sitting. She could sense his presence and it excited her. She could feel the subtle variations in body heat the way a snake does when it is blind and in summer molt. The snake sheds his entire body including the eyes. That's why rattlesnakes are so deadly in summer. They can't see, and blindly striking anything warm.

The hostility rose up to her abdomen and lodged in her throat like a fish bone hastily swallowed – she tried to civilly answer his queries. How was she doing? And so on. She wanted him to go away, leave her alone. She knew there wasn't much chance of dancing with anyone else that night now that he had come over to her table.

Everyone always fled whenever they chanced to meet up like this. It wasn't just his physical size that made people avoid them, it was something else almost intangible, as if people sensed that that they had some unresolved business, and perhaps there was a presence of danger. Maybe they sensed the volatile nature of their relationship and thought it best to clear off.

It wasn't a case of the roving men realizing that they were no match for him, mutual friends were uncomfortable as well.

She got up to leave, and he walked her to her car. Once outside, they felt freer and breathed more easily. There wasn't that awkward sense of his hovering over her when they were inside. They walked close together, almost but not quite touching one another. They lingered at her car, talking of nothing to make time pass more slowly. Neither one was willing to say good night to the other.

He said, hey, you still owe me a massage, I'd like to collect it now if you're not too tired. Or, if you are, tomorrow morning would be fine too. She wondered did he really want to massage, or was this yet another clumsy attempt to reestablish contact? She was half angry half intrigued. It didn't occur to her to be upfront and asking precisely what he had in mind. Chances were, he would deny any interest in her, that all he wanted was a massage.

They had often spent the night together as friends. Was this the big showdown? Would you want to sleeping partner for the night, and then a quick goodbye, nice to see you in the morning? If that was the case, then he was in for a surprise because she was going to give him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't want to fuck her.

If he laid one hand on her she was going to really let him know what a bastard he was and if he wanted to fuck her, then he was going to have to own up to the whole affair, that he did love her and if he wanted to sleep with her, then he damn well better marry her and be done with it.

She was tired of the cat and mouse roulette and she wasn't going to get sucked into making the first move because he was unable to make it himself.

Sex wasn't a deciding factor in their relationship. If it wasn't there, or so he thought, they weren't having a relationship – regardless of all the other aspects of their time spent together.

She slept in his arms, holding hands and thighs, they clung to each other the whole night long until dawn separated them from dreams and reality.

At breakfast he said, it's nice to know we can still innocently sleep together without the confusion over a relationship. She thought, yeah, we didn't fuck. Are we innocent? Who's garden are we in anyway? And who let the snake out?

No, we are not innocent, just blind and unable to help ourselves. And we keep on trying to reach each other in our own pathetic ways.

Fall 1980

Orange Cat

An orange cat ran across the road tonight. I tried to avoid him. The car stalled, a tuft of fur drifted up and caught in the light of the headlamp. Just a few days ago, I noticed the Cat Crossing sign as I drove to work, and, I thought I'd never be in a position of breach of faith. You said, "I hit an orange cat the other night too." And we talked about karma and abortion, as if the cat were the karma. Or the dogma. But we didn't really believe in that. So, tonight I hit my first cat. I felt so guilty and  sorry for the owner of that cat who would look in vain for her wayward tom. Then wondered about fate. Are we merely instrumental in the scheduled deaths of others whose time has come? Where are we in the right place at the right time for the accident to occur? Do any of us die before our time has come? What about all those people who try to ended it, and then live? Is it destined as to who will live and who will die? What about all the men and women who abort their young too soon? Is that karma of the unborn? Or are we all murderers whose time has come?

Fall 1980
added 10/16
slightly revised

Fiction class with Elizabeth Herron Fall 1980

Since I can't date most of my fiction and memoir, and it looks like I revisited some old pieces for this class, which, sadly, turned me off to fiction, I'll file them here, at the end of the year. I pretty much abandoned the prose process after taking this class and it wasn't until I established this blog that I was willing to revisit prose. 

I still have an aversion to fiction. I'm much more comfortable with memoir. I do like Elizabeth (as a poet), but I sure didn't like her class. I came away feeling like a complete failure in both poetry and prose. I'll own it, not blame others, it was all on me. My doors of perception, self-doubt, and vulnerability conspired against me. I wasn't very good at pleasing others with my work, which required a wrestling match before I got it down on paper (who knew I had dyslexia?). I guess I learned something from the class. But there's still a bitter taste in the back of the throat some 36 years later. 

The one good thing about the class was that I became fast friends with Ockly scientist/engineer Michael Fulton, who was working on a sci-fi novel. We saw each other for a few years, and kept in touch through the 1990s. Worth the price of admission. I've added most of this prose on 10/2016. It's hard not to resist fixing them.   Onward, as they say.

SALMON DANCE

SALMON DANCE

After the first push of autumn rain,

the sand bar melts and like a woman,

the river opens to the thrusting salmon.

Volcanic blood flushes the skin

of this false spring and

mountains press hard against the clouds

that suck and lick at them.

The sides of the salmon flash lava-red

as they swim upriver to spawn in shallow pools;

tails scooping out hollows in the sand

where red roe ignites the ancient fires

and the slow combustion begins.

Squadrons of pelicans dive in unison,

their beaks brimming with fish.

Seal pups along the mouth of the river

leave natal waters for their first ocean swim.

The darkness of the Farallon Islands laboriously

presses down on the meniscus of the ocean.

With the naked eye, one can't see

how the San Andreas Fault stretches

toward the Ring of Fire

where the oceanic trench cuts deep

into the earth and lava leaks from the wound.
(when the abortionist's job is done.)

11/24/1980
rev. 4/1986, 2008
1988 Catalyst

Forthcoming in Spectrum 34/35 Double Issue, 2023

RRWG, Cppperfield's my review of Boschka Layton, Zara Altair & Ina Scrocco

Petaluma Argus Courier, SSU,Poetry of Love

Arts Month, Word Art reading, Maureen Hurley

Sonoma County Arts Council, Word Art

RRWG flyer, Nov-Dec, 1980, Maureen Hurley & George Englander

Art takes off at HES

Art takes off at HES The Fourth R arts program got underway at Healdsburg Elementary School this week with poets, maskmakers and dancers visiting the classrooms. Poet Maureen Hurley worked with students Monday on the basics of poetry and improvisational composition. For more on the "bigger and better” art in the schools program in Healdsburg, see page K-1.

Postcard to Donna, heatwave in October

Sebastopol Friends of the Library reading

THE FERRYMAN

— from The Scream, by Edvard Munch

Ferry me across the water.

I am the madwoman,

the raftsman is asleep.

No, I am the raft,

madness is asleep.

The children who gather around me

have been here before,

their bruised eyes witness

the tedium of living.

Visions in the mind reflect

in the pool of the eye.

I fear their faces under my fingers.

They melt grotsesquely into the river

& the silent scream is on their lips.

These are the children of Munch

floating in their saline nursery.

It is the glance of the child

complete in my likeness

I will never see in the mirror.

I have only their eyes.

It is there too in memory.

Madness is complete.

I am Charon across the water.

The river is asleep.

1980
rev. 1988

ACACIA PODS

Clusters of acacia pods hanging ripe from the tree,
twisting and sizzling in the summer heat,
exploding their black seeds like sparks
shooting out from a burning log.

7/28/1980

The Lingual Arch of the River and the Sea (dream) (prose)

The Lingual Arch of the River and the Sea

River mouth bathers, I want to go in the water. There's a dock being built where the ocean meets the river. It's a dock with a wooden wall around it. There will be several doors and windows put in so the view won't be blocked. Someone will probably eat breakfast there during good weather. The people who live there are friends of mine, I don't know who they are. It's a dream. It's hot. I want to go swimming. I think I'll go thru the unfinished door porthole—it's a lot closer than going all the way around to the shore.

I spot a mighty wave building up out at sea. My God, it's another tidal wave like the one that reappears in this other recurring dream except in that dream the sea is always tropical and there are lots of islands. Hawaii maybe.

This ocean is definitely not tropical. It has that black-blue quality of brackish water. Bright sunshine and blue sky summer afternoons of intense summer heat. The beach is reddish crumbly granite. Lots of iron stains from the hills that tint the river red. Its probably the Russian River but I'm not sure.

The wave, as it collects on the far side of the horizon, exposes much of the rocky beach. I grip the redwood 4x4 being used as a dock piling and I wonder if I can hold on to it tightly enough during the tidal wave. I probably will have thousands of splinters in my hands if I do. Better splinters than drowning I guess. My fingernails will probably break off at the quick from the intense pressure of fighting the wave.

The mighty wave crashes up against the dock and I am terrified that I will be swept away , but the dock takes up the shock of the wave and it protects me. The wave gently laps up through the doorway where I'm standing, and , as it passes through the doorway, I hear the ocean speak for the first time in my life.

It's probably the first time its been able to speak to anyone in god knows how long. How many incomplete doorways are built along the shore for an ocean to speak: through? I didn't know.

How could anyone know that the ocean needed a doorway to speak through, or that the ocean has just been dying to talk to anyone, anything—for centuries? We've all misunderstood the ocean. It speaks in a low breath, whispering profound truths of pure rhetoric. I am hearing it, and for the first time, my life makes complete sense to me. It all makes complete sense. We are all at home with it all.

I try to remember a sentence or two to quote from so I can plaijerise upon some of the ocean's many truths. People will think I am so wise, so zen. But just as it speaks, the words empty out of my ears as fast as they go in.

I can't remember one thing that the ocean told me. All I can remember is that the ocean needs a mouth to talk through, that the waves are tongues, that the river too is a tongue leading into the dark whispering ocean of many tongues, that the mouth of the river is interlocked in an embrace with one of the many mouths of the ocean, that the ocean is polygamous. It tongues rivers everywhere.

All those mouths exchange the souls of those who are indifferent to life, the dead who slip into the grey snags of willow growing along the river shore. They slide down through the roots of the willow and into the river to that long journey downward into the sea.

The river is a molten tongue carrying them downward into the sea. The words on the tongue of the river are words of all those who still wait to speak. The ocean is a tongue. The river is a tongue. They share the same mouth. To speak they each need separate mouths. Men have one mouth and two tongues. Women have two mouths and one tongue.

Mouths and tongues each need a place to lie in before they can speak. We need the lingual arch of the river and the sea.

8/15/1980
I revised this for ELizabeth Herron's prose fiction class. A version was written in the summer of 1979. So, the origin of this could be 79.
added & slightly revised 7/17.

THE LINGUAL ARCH OF THE RIVER AND THE SEA 1979

GREAT EXPECTATIONS, and other short poems

It’s gotten to the point
where I push my Tampax out
of the birth canal unaided.

8/17/1980

TIGHT CORNERS

There’s not enough counter space
to encounter anything.

8/20/1980

GRAVEYARD SHIFT

I’m going blackberrying
with my black burying can.

8/20/1980

AS THE PLOUGHMAN WALKS

It’s like a ploughman tilling
the edge of the galaxy
with the handle of the Big Dipper.
But you know there’s a drought.
And yet you furrow the damp earth of my legs.
As the ploughman walks,
you, having scattered seed
like the stars of the Milky Way
across my belly, trading sperm for egg,
only to leave me stranded like a beached whale
waiting for the morning rains
to raise up the level of the ocean
to the parched shoreline of this bed.

8/11/1980
Arcturus, Böotes, the herdsman, cattle

Recipe for an eclipse, on the occasion of Suzanne and Ron’s wedding

Recipe for an eclipse, on the occasion of Suzanne and Ron’s wedding

1. Make a simple pinhole camera. You need two pieces of stuff white paper. Make a small hole small in the sheet that will be the upper piece, and the eclipse will project itself onto the lower piece of page. In this manner you can safely view the eclipse and you won’t go blind from trying to look directly at the sun.

2. Bring out your two bottles of Dos Equus chilled for the occasion of celebrating a partial eclipse. You will need one for you and one for your friend. Sit down under the shade of a tree and wait for the eclipse to occur. While waiting under the trees, look at the sunlight filtering through the leaves. See all the circles of light on the ground? Throw away the pinhole camera. You don’t need it. Look on the ground, there are myriad eclipse is everywhere. Hundreds of them. However, today there are no eclipse is scheduled to occur in this part of the hemisphere. Only a wedding, an eclipse of sorts.

8/10 1980

MELANCHOLY

MELANCHOLY

the center of  a muskmelon 
with its lips full of seed
is the body of a woman  
in love 

 7/28/80

WHETSTONE

Bread dulls the knife knife
Paper dulls the scissors
The senses are dulled,
the cutting edge, gone.
The knife against the whetstone
leaves a fine residue of stone and steel.

DOWN AMONG THE BONES

DOWN AMONG THE BONES

The slumbering giant,

I saw  his crematory eye

spark and ignite

the memory of the night hour

whose hour has come

before his red rimmed eye?

I pick myself up among the bones

You are the dreamer and you are the dream

You scatter rose petals into the sea

I separate the chaff from the grain

I am the gleaner, I am the dream

and the mud oozes over your dreams

What seed is this that sprouts

from the breast of the universe?

From the edge of night you look up

and you stare into that vacant sky

You look for the edge

The shaft of light penetrates

the eye of the dreamer

the womb of the universe

where the tidal forces of your life flows

It is the spine of the ridge

where the red wind blows

In the mud you find the edge

the edge is in the arms of the red wind.

1979, 1980
Another version was published in The Program, vol. 1, no.3, 1979

THAT I AM COYOTE

THAT I AM COYOTE, ii

Coyote was my witness
howling at the doorstep.
Some say I was born in the crack
between the lintel and doorjam.

I've been the hooves of the centaur,
the ember sparking the crematory fire,
the grass on the sunken graves of Hittites.
I am the mist rising from hollow armors.

I've seen silvered hands of women
tattooed with indigo weaving the rug,
and the slaughtered fawn
run red synthesis upon the earth.

I am the song the edge of night sings
and dawn howls on street corners.
I was the essence that flew upward at creation
and out of it stars were made.

Nothing more than granite ground to flour by glaciers,
you race through streams to lie in the ocean.
I've divided air from water and fire from the horizon.
We are lines converging on the compass and the cross.

We are the first-born of Coyote.

1980

A SONG OF SORROW

    for Meriden Le Seuer

The mindful trust of this body is held between the spaces of the unseeing eye, left behind on the prairie where Crazy Horse last stood. Yonder, prairie flowers grow naked on the graves of those whose blood nourished the soil 100 years after the last buffalo robe rotted into dust. The circling sparrowhawks encompass the lost souls of those who died in anger, hatred, or in fear. This is a song of sorrow for those who walk alone.

7/13/1980
Port Townsend, WA

POEM FOR RUSTY NORTH'S HANDS

POEM FOR RUSTY NORTH'S HANDS

With its absent-minded stroke
upon the coarse woven skirt,
the knowing touch of an
arthritic hand, too old
for a middle-aged woman

The surety of her deft dressmaker's touch
reminds me of my grandmother's hands,
who made all my school clothes,
but this woman's other hand is missing

& I sense the presence of her twin limb
occupying space, still capable of feeling,
never aging, like the amputated limbs
of children.

As if in greeting and supplication,
her absent hand caresses this room
with the comfort and care of a hand
that lips of children dutifully brush.

Her daughters smooth their dresses
carefully over their thin knees.
I too remember how cruel the kids at school were
on the subject of home-made dresses.

7/11/1980
Port Townsend, WA
The Child in the Bell, CPITS Statewide Anthology, 1981-82

Port Townsend Poetry Conference 1980 (photo)

Port Townsend Poetry Conference 1980. I was with Sharon Doubiago, Tobey Kaplan, and Leonard Cirino. I'm listening to Meridel LeSueur. Sitting on the floor at her feet, actually. Her daughter, Deborah took the photo with my camera. I found it decades later when I scanned my slides. We crashed the Centrum conference—they tried to bust us, and Meridel said, the California poets stay or I go. Sharon Doubiago read from her new manuscript, Hard Country. Meridel said,  This book needs to be published—and the rest is history.

Writing at Centrum

 Centrum’s literary program is a rigorous, craft-focused community for writers, editors, translators, and readers working in a variety of styles. It all began in 1974 with the founding of the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference by novelist Bill Ransom, who envisioned an egalitarian, non-hierarchical conference where the emphasis was on the craft of literary writing. Jim Heynen, Carol Jane Bangs, Sam Hamill, and many other writers continued the emphasis on the writing craft and the mid-July conference has become an annual pilgrimage for many.

1980 (I went to this one; I remember meeting Lisel Mueller, and Bill Knott as well as Donald Hall; I think this is the year I met Bill Root and Pan Uschek, and Rusty North.)

FACULTY: Galway Kinnell, Meridel LeSueur, Richard Shelton, Ann Standork, James Bertolino, Madeline DeFrees, Donald Hall, Sam Hamill, Bill Ransom, Lisel Mueller, Bill Knott.

 

1981 (I'm pretty certain I went to this one too as I have a journal entry on Jack Cady; and I spent time with Tree Swenson and Kathleene over at Copper Canyon Press. Kathleene West (what was her last name back then. I found out that Linnerson was her maiden name, she said she was always reinventing herself. Anyway, she got me to apply to teach poetry to kids in Montana.)

FACULTY: Margaret Atwood, Robert Haas, William Matthews, Sam Hamill, Tree Swenson, Leslie Marmon Silko, William Stafford, Jack Cady, Jane Yolen.

 

1982  (I know that I went to this one too, I remember singing and drinking with Tess and Ray (note to self: don't try to keep up with them drinking); I fell in love with Thomas McGrath. I remember his Imaginary Letters.)
FACULTY: Olga Broumas, Henry Carlile, Sandra McPherson, Carolyn Forché, Tess Gallagher, Sam Hamill, Paul Hansen, Jim Heynen, Thomas McGrath, Richard Shelton, James Laughlin, Raymond Carver, Gordon Lish.

 

added 2/2017

BUCKEYE

The blossoming candles of the buckeye
are pointing their way toward water.

7/1/1980

Wild Cherries

WILD CHERRIES

                   —for Robert Bruce Hamilton, wherever you are

The wild cherry trees of the Colombia River Gorge were covered with tight red fruit almost gone wasted because everybody drove up to Troutdale, near the slopes of Mt. Hood to get prized Bing cherries at a dollar a pound—dark luscious meaty fruit the size of your big toenail. Even the birds weren't allowed to nibble on them. Not that I could afford them either. I joined the birds in a more profitable hunt for the wild fruit that hung within reach of the river shore.

Volunteer trees that had escaped the hybrid yoke, were laden with tiny cherry pie cherries. I climbed up on the roof of the Volkswagon bus, and ate wild cherries as fast as I could pick them. I had stiff competition with the Clark's nuthatches who were quicker. They gulped the fruit down, seeds and all.

I began to savor the cherries as I satiated my desire for the first fresh fruit in season—after a penitential winter of dull canned goods. I ate them most delicately. I nibbled on their edges. I bit them in half, rolling them in my mouth, savoring the tart and sweet admixture— balancing them on the tip of my tongue. I admired their jeweled redness—like pomegranates

Then I saw something move inside one cherry—actually a part of something. A slender threadlike worm dangling off the other half of my cherry. I cautiously bit into another cherry hoping it was an accident. It too had a worm. And the next one, the one after that, and so on. Every cherry had its worm, and I had already eaten two pounds of cherries. I felt queasy and imagined minced worms stitching themselves back together—making a reverse journey back up my throat.

The only thing that saved me from myself was that I recalled hearing that Provencal cherries—unrivaled in flavor—each came with a resident worm. The payison of Provence swear that's the reason why their cherries taste divine. They eat their cherries with worms and all with a bon appétit. But I felt betrayed by all this bounteous nature.

I prefer my protein less lively—didn't I tell you I'm vegetarian?

ca 1980?  rev. 2014
An event with Sweet Old Bob, so the mid 70s, but when I wrote it, I'm not sure. Hindsight is a great tool for editing. I remember being overwhelmed by prose, so not my strong suit. So this piece lay fallow for ages. I rediscovered it while scanning old work. Dusted it off a bit.

16 voices poetry reading at Artrium, SRJC

Poetry readings June - December

TREE RINGS

Rings on trees signify the passing of years
The wide light-colored bands encode the wet years.
Dark dense wood—when the rains didn’t come.
I am looking down at my fingernails
and I see growth rings there too
Except the growth is measured in weeks, not years.
The rings on my nails are for grief.
Someone says it’s a protein deficiency,
or antibiotic intake? Pregnancy,
pregnancy lost. Loss of the heart, loss of love,
lapse of memory, loss of the poet, loss of fear,
ridicule, memory gain. Water. Drought.

6/21/1980
Solstice

Barn swallow (drawing)

CHANT FOR THE LINE OF COAST, Horicon School

CHANT FOR THE LINE OF COAST

blue green
heron
blue heron gliding
herron gliding
gliding blue green
river
shoreline
blue green
wonder
gliding heron blue green
river
fish leap
river green
blue river
water splash
blue green
river, sound

river path 

winding 

wind path 

river sound 

frog leap 

salmon dance 

river sound 

wind leap 

wind dance 

river dance

one river
three mountains going on forever
two blue herons
white wings outstretched
wind blowing on 10,000 pine needles
redwood forests
red pants
four geese
green shoes green shirt
15 blackbirds flying south along the Gualala river
one coastal highway
13 views of the coast
12 winnebagos heading north
ocean river going south
ocean going river
four more mountains
one peninsula migrating north two inches a year
the san andreas fault    *
12 winnebagos at fault
the point reyes coast
point arena
pointing west    

pointing north

June 1980   

Teaching at Horicon School in Annapolis, a one-room school house meant we had an unusual opportunity. Most of the students were Pomo, so we all moved outside for the poetry residency, and wrote about nature. This ditty was written inside a  hollow redwood tree stump, open to the ocean. I don't think it's great, but it is an artifact of the times.  I literally have not seen some of this work since 1980! An odd time capsule. Added 11/16.

Two short poems: DISTANCE, ACROSS THE SKY

DISTANCE 

What is the definition
of distance between the tilled
and the unplowed field?

5/12/1980

ACROSS THE SKY

Thirteen blackbirds
flying across the sky,
the sky.
Thirteen blackbirds
chasing a raven,
a raven,
across the sky.
Thirteen ways
to chase a raven
across the sky,
the sky.

5/18/1980

Poetry readings in May

Big Russell Ranch, Yreka, Oral History

BIG RUSSEL RANCH

Edith Hazlan Howard remembers:

These hyacinths just keep growing but this ain't no lawn. Look at it all choked up with them damn hyacinths. I didn't know what I got into when I moved in here last July. 

See, I had my own ranch. Planted my own orchards. Took care of my own stock. Then I got too old. And lived with my daughter a while in Oregon. Then, when the cancer got too bad, I moved back to Yreka. The doc is real good here. 

I like to be out digging in the garden. I don't go to church much. Had to stay near the toilet night and day. It was something awful—my stomach. 

A young preacher man came by to visit me. He didn't mean no harm. I lived my life accordingly. 

Big Russel Ranch v.1. Edith Hazlet Howard, Yreka, CA, 1979-80 (from hard copy)

Hyacinths

We met Edith Hazlet Howard in Howard Alley, on the back streets of Yreka, as she was readying her spring garden. It was a warm spring morning. With a scowl that would have frightened the devil himself, she attached to those pesky hyacinths with a vengeance, glaring at our unwelcome approach. I was startled by the presence of this formidable woman – she was the incarnation of Macbeth's witches in her baggy black overalls, gum boots, and shovel – I must've said something to break the ice because suddenly she burst into a big smile, as if we were long lost friends, and so, began her tale.

This documentary transcript which follows, is an attempt to capture edith's convoluted nonlinear style of speaking, which at first, made little sense, but as the story began to unwind, the connections between things became clearer. I've made no attempt to turn this into a traditional prose piece, which would be easier to read but it would also be watered-down and change by my own aesthetics of what writing should be. The connections she made were very much the stuff from which poetry is made. The metaphor of hyacinths and cancer, the living and the dying, and the daily survival of a fiercely independent pirate pioneer woman facing the ultimate challenge.

Edith Hazlet Howard remembers:

Ear to the Ground Poetry festival, Sonoma State University, 1980

I made a 40-page chapbook, did most of the grunt work.

An early version of  WOMAN IS OF THE OCEAN

MORNING COMES IN AWASH

Morning comes in awash

with sunlight the color of apples.

A bluejay banging away at the window

with a need to build her nest,

searches for a place to call home,

not remembering from day to day

that the window is still there.

Still, she comes

trying to find a way in.

Even if she could,

her chances are no better

today than yesterday.

Her instinct surely guides her,

and when she finds the right spot,

she'll know her need, while I

continue to stare out this window,

making no move at all.

4/18/1980
rev. 1984
Forestville