Letter to Lee Perron 10/19/81

Lee,

I feel the need to clear up a few things...some final parting words to you. Remember when I said to you over a year ago, that if you got it together with another woman, our friendship would cease to be? I've said it to you several times, and basically I plan to stick to my statement, that was the only 'rule' i ever made in our relationship.

All the rest of the trauma that I put up with (in terms of how you treated me and our on/off affair for the past 2 and a 1/2 years)...patience, persistent patience.  Water under the bridge. I felt, that all thru that incredible craziness, that maybe there was something worth fighting for, something worth acknowledging... a love stronger than most loves, a connection of mind and body between two people that could last lifetimes.

I think you panicked and tried to flee. I panicked and pursued you. As long as that deep taproot was there, I was willing to endure and struggle thru, because I believed in love, and in you, and, I felt that you weren't allowing yourself to explore your emotions. I thought there was a great emotional blockage on your part, that you were never cold (as so many others perceived you to be).

Now, I think you're thick-headed and not in touch with your feelings, but that is no longer my business. If you wish to seek further feedback, please talk about it with your other friends. Not me. They have some important things to say to you, but won't do so unless you seek put their advice. (Try Jere or Greer out on this matter sometime).

You have decided that romance is an impossibility with me, and that "we were so unhappy together in the past," as you so aptly put it the other day. Aside from the fact that we never really had a chance to have a "relationship" per se, it makes me wonder about the validity of all this "unhappiness" garbage. You decided that you didn't want a relationship— therefore we never had one. Yet you pursued me. What was I, a conquest? You broke up my seven-year "marriage" with Bob. 

The mutual unhappiness we experienced had nothing to do with our being a couple, and having a relationship. The unhappiness was a byproduct of the other trauma we experienced, the abortion, a byproduct of your unwillingness to be open to having a relationship; and the unhappiness was not from having, or not having a relationship. Is that clear?

So, you've made yourself perfectly clear—we will not have a relationship, understood, computed. Got it. When you took up with another woman, you had the foreknowledge that I would reject you, that I would not accept your friendship, that I could not accept your friendship. That single act granted you your freedom, the freedom you so desperately sought. You are now free to do what you want with whomever you want—the only stipulation is that you can't have me again, ever, as a friend, as a lover, or whatever third alternative you were trying to come up with.




You've made your choice, Lee, now stick to it; I have been doing so, ever since July when I received your " Dear John" letter up in Port Townsend. Need I remind you about that 'other woman' stipulation? When you sent me that letter, you regained your precious freedom to do what you want. So go do it and leave me alone. I have my life to live and I will do it without you. I don't need a confused man hanging on to me, dragging me down again. 

You see, I too felt like I was drowning in this relationship because you tried so hard to hang on to me as a friend, as a lover. I asked you to let me go. But you couldn't do that. You didn't want to lose me. You clung to the idea of our friendship, and you strung me along, knowing my weakness. My anger towards you is deep-rooted, and many of those scars will never fully heal.

I can't believe you were actually that dumb. It's my fault, I thought intelligence had something to do with emotions. Intelligence has nothing to do with emotions. Nor has it anything to do with your desire to have me there as a friend always, as you pursued other women with my passing a blessing upon you. No guilt.

You are no longer a part of my life. You've ceased to exist for me.
 You're a non-entity and that's the way it has to be. I'm not going to
be the moping martyr hovering in the background, nor will I cease to be interesting to others, nor will I lose my creativity; some unfounded egocentric fear you seemed to have voiced at one time of another. I do just fine without you. I've been doing fine without you for more than a year now.

I don't know how much I can stand to be around  you—you honestly get on my nerves and irritate me. I'm not saying this to dig at you. I get inhibited when I'm around you, you cramp my style, that's why I don't want to see you. I feel watched and I feel stifled around you, it's unhealthy for us both, so leave me alone and let me breathe.

Before all this nonsense started, I was willing to be patient with you. I put up with  a lot of things that I would never tolerate from another human being. Patience is something women are very good at. I've been more patient with you than most mothers are with their own children, and, what I've discovered  is, that you had no idea of what I was doing. You've used up your lifetime supply of patience; and  love from this woman who once was a true friend. There's no more left for me to give.

So, now you'll have to  accept the 'other me'. In a sense, I am now another woman. You may not like my hostility and  abruptness, but that's the way it is. This  other side of my nature has always been there, but I foolishly coddled and sheltered you from it. Now it's your turn to see the other side of me. You may not like it. So be it. In one sense, you've got it coming to you. I can see it makes you extremely uncomfortable, and that you do not like it one bit.

If you were really there for me to share my emotions, if you had any emotions to share with me, then I wouldn't be writing you this final letter. As it is now,I've been a sounding board for you and it feels very one-sided. 

I can hear you saying: "Maureen is going thru rough times right now. It's too bad. I may feel a bit guilty about the whole thing, she's withdrawn, moping, perhaps suicidal. I owe it to her to be there and help her out, and then we can be friends again, and things will get better between us." This is a fantasy dialogue I sometimes hear you playing to yourself. There's no way you're going to be absolved, and then we'll be best buddies again. This is really it. It's over, finished between us.

I read somewhere once that it's the woman who has the ultimate power of decision when a relationship has ended, and this one ended in July. I get the sense that you think l'm waiting in the wings to attack, you, or to make sexual advances towards you, or something of that ilk. And all I can say to you is, how absurd! Maybe I didn't make myself clear in the past. Well, rest assured your body is safe from me. Not interested.

Your bringing in the 'other woman' was the key in unlocking and dissolving this  relationship. You, in your egotistical male paranoia, are afraid of being raped — not that it's even possible for a woman to rape a man—ravaged, seduced, more like, or maybe you secretly just wanted to be pursued. Yet you're always the pursuer. 

No longer will you pull off my top in jest, and pretend it was just a joke (albeit sick). I am not available for that form of crude torture you seemed to relish so much. I no longer am interested in you— you blew it this time. There's no reprisal, no turning back. My capacity for pain had more than been filled.

Galway once told me after Leonard put his eye out, that love is hard, that while many good things are easy, true love is not, because love is a power, its own power which continually makes its way forward, from night into day, always forward into difficult day. Our paths no longer seek the light of difficult day. Goodbye Lee, God bless.

Maureen 

10/19/81

I carried this letter around with me for months as a reminder before I sent it in December. See At the Lotus Sutra Spa, Entering my 30th Year
added 10/16 Minor revision, punctuation & spelling cleaned up.

A QUESTION OF BALANCE

A QUESTION OF BALANCE

Governments are going native
We worry about Iranian Oil, socialism,
and the fundamentalist essence of capitalism.
Free speech liberties are bought and sold
Then, there's the cockroach problem.
There was no repression from Stalin's point of view.
We need a day to get started on this earth
And what is the Polish Question?
We talk about compost and ask
what's the best kind of shit to put on raspberries?
In this world today, it's a question of balance.

10/19/1981
minor line break changes & punctuation
added 7/17

REESE RIVER VALLEY

REESE RIVER VALLEY

I remember the adults talking politics,

the blue cigar smoke of family reunions,

The kitchen table jumped

with empty whiskey glasses and jam jars—

as their fists punctuated each statement.

This, my inheritance.

Sometimes my grandmother sits

and talks about her days on Home Ranch

about the coyote fur coat she and her Aunt May made.

Everywhere they went, the dogs followed

with raised hackles, growling and barking.

Even in San Francisco, the dogs sensed the danger.

Far from the green hills of Bantry Bay,

my family settled in this place.

The grain in this valley was worth more

than the silver grubstake claims in Austin.

She said: Men had to eat.

My half-brother is part Cherokee.

Our fathers never met.

His Indian grandmother sat on a porch

watching someone else's cattle forage

under the fierce Nevada sun.

But it was my grandmother who raised us.

While unloading an enraged bull

her uncle Paddy was killed by his horse.

His wife, Mary, stood on the porch

her mouth framing a silent white O

as the foreman lifted his rifle

to the forehead of that cowpony

who lay dying and the wind lifted

a dust funnel that whirled through

the open door like ghosts.

We sat by Paddy's tombstone,

granite & marble softened by the elements.

She said, I wanted you to see this place.

To write the stories. I'm the last one left now.

I took a photograph of my grandmother

looking away from the camera—

the moment, engraved in memory like stone.

I never told my grandmother I love her.

10/15/81

see In the San Geronimo Valley

We Dreamed We Were Giants

We stopped to rest on the top of the knoll before turning back. Late afternoon. I fell asleep sitting indian style with my chin in my hand. Lee and I had the most amazing dream. We had turned into upright stone outcroppings at the end of a long winding ridge. We were really sleeping giants, dozing off for a few moments (in giant time} and like Gulliver, we were visited by little people who made pilgrimages to this place. For them it was a powerful spot. Our dreams became the stuff of their myths. They held picnics by our knees and along our thighs where we touched the ground. The lives of the people were so short, in flash, three generations had come and gone, and with their passing, the memory of our dreams disappeared from their stories. The visits became fewer and fewer, until one day they no longer came at all. We awoke with a start. Only a few minutes had elapsed. We stretched, yawned, and like bears we ambled back down the mountain in the dusk light.

10/15/81

minor changes, added 7/17

IN THE SAN GERONIMO VALLEY (see Reese River Valley)

IN THE SAN GERONIMO VALLEY
      —to Dan Propper

In the San Geronimo Valley 
where my grandmother lives,
a, tree is growing out of a cleft in the rock.   
When I was a kid, I  remember 
the adults talking politics and smoking cigars.
The kitchen table jumped with empty whiskey glasses
as their fists punctuated each sentence.
There are no more Indians in San Geronimo Valley. 
My brother is part Cherokee. 
His great-grandmother sat wrinkled on a porch 
under the fierce Nevada sun.My grandmother spent summers
riding across mesquite covered valleys.
She never met the Cherokee woman
whose native blood sculpted my brother's face
into the  sane proud shape of arroyos.
His high cheekbones frame flashing black eyes
darker than my owm Black-Irish look.
Our fathers never met, 
yet they loved the same woman
who bore us willingly,
but it was my grandmother who raised us.
Sometimes she talks about Nevada,
and Home  Ranch where her uncle Paddy
was thrown and killed by a horse.
His wife stood on the porch,
her mouth a silent, white 0
as the foreman lifted his rifle 
to the forehead of the cowpony
and the Nevada wind howled through the open door.
In the Valley, where Geronimo once rode,
the tree thrusts its roots deeper into the rock.
The fracture widens imperceptibly
as roots swell from the Autumn rains.
I have never told my grandmother I love her.
 
date? added 10.16
on paper dated 0ct. 12, 81.
See REESE RIVER VALLEY
HOME RANCH  4/85

4 short poems from photos

THE WAY OF THE MOUNTAIN

Bent double from the weight,
my chin brushing the red velvet blouse,
I am staring at my cracked toes.

Splay footed sure mountain feet
to carry wood back to the yurt.
The band around my forehead
carries the weight away from my shoulders.
I think of my small dowry.
Perhaps the ferns won't mind my poverty.

Everyone in this village is poor

It is the way of the mountain.

10/1981

APOLOGY POEM

Thumb, forgive the hammer
that came down so suddenly.
It was meant for another kind of nail.

10/11/1981

IGUANAS

Marine iguanas everywhere
black scaly skin
dragon's manes
yellow slit eyes
tail flagellates in the sea
when they swim
iguana bodies all over
standing upon each other's heads
a lone crab scuttle across their surface.

10/11/1981

The rugged black edges
gaping holes
torn rents
shredded
my heart consumes itself
in its infant hatred
from loving you too much.

10/11/1981
added 10/16

MOON SNAIL

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.

10/10/81

FOR THE FISH IN MY LIFE

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

Sonoma County Stump 8/18/81

Dream journal

Dream journal

I was visiting Port Townsend with my old friend Carolyn. We were sitting outside the ferry dock which had moved and was now near the late-night market, the Breadbasket.

A big battleship pulls up to port. It looks like the MV Coho out of Port Angeles. Iron clunkers with layers and layers of paint added on until the sides were visibly thicker than the original walls.

I'm waiting to find you, you're going to drive into town at some point during the day and if I sit here long enough, I know I'll find you. It's a matter of waiting. Because you have no phone, the only thing I can do is to wait. That is why we're sitting in the sun on a park bench.All roads pass through here.

Carolyn has an ex-lover living in Vancouver she wants to visit. We're just passing through. We're sitting in the morning sun and I tell her about you, my ex-lover I met when I was visiting last summer.

My ex-lover, DJ is a juggler. A street performer. He always uses his hands. Just as I'm telling her about him, I see DJ get off the boat and start walking towards town with a group of his friends. He's describing something to them with his hands. And they are all lost in conversation.

I yell out, hey, DJ! And he comes over surprised to see me. I could almost hear his mind clicking. What you doing here? Sure, I like her, was last summer. We talk, greet each other and are glad to see one another again.

Later, I'm on this hulk of a ship. The bottom has a trap door that opens out. It was an ex torpedo launch boat, now empty of cargo. Special pumps unload water after the floors are cleaned – we close the doors and pump the water out. The ship raises up out of the water because there's no ballast and the additional air in the hull makes it lighter like a balloon.

The ship is in danger of tipping over because it's top heavy, and too much out of the water. We're all standing out on the deck steadying the ship with our hands on the dock, doing okay until the glassine sea changes and becomes littered with debris.

The debris is made of the floating mussel shells and clams, and pumice rock floating on the waves. The waves rise higher in the sea churns. A carpet of stones,

Now we're off the boat, and to the right of us is an estero protected from the waves of the sea beyond the islands. The water is bath temperature and brilliant.

I have two books in my hands. One may be a Russian novel, or maybe a Bible, and the other is a text on critical thinking since Plato. They're big fat books. The kind that make your wrists hurt if you carry them with hand and thumb wrapped around the spine of the book.

I'm entering the water and both of my hands are filled with these books. For some reason clear only to my subconscious, I know I mustn't let go of these books, to lose them would be unpardonable. I am a keeper of these books.

The water sweeps me away and I am pulled toward the open sea.

I am able to keep my head out of the water but I can't use my hands to swim to safety because of the books.

The whirlpool inundates me and I still won't let go of the books. I start to swim in the books in my hands I use as paddles. They are only effective when I hold the spines and covers tightly closed as I raise my hands to make a stroke. The cramps in my wrist are unbearable. Fire shoots up the inside of my forearms as the ligaments knot into balls of oxygen-starved sinew.

I kick harder with my legs. They have the strength to get me through this turbulent water and I head toward shore. That opening maw of the ocean sucks at the gate of land wanting to devour anything in its path.

Some of the swimmers willingly forward. Others resist. I make it to the land and fall face forward on the shore. The beach is made of stones. The waterlogged books fall open with clumps of pages stuck together. It's as if the Bible were drowned. Pages stuck together and all those words locked within—and my friends are nowhere in sight.

9/29/1981
added 10/16

CALF EYES

             —for Leonard

The old mirror in the hayloft,
instead of allowing light in,
has been blocking it out
for the past 25 years.
It throws light back to the sky.
 An image of itself
it throws back to the sky
an image of itself framed
with the liquid green
of maple leaves.
Behind the mirror
the annual pile of cobwebs
gathers in barn dust.

I've always noticed
how the eyes of calves
are like twin pools of murky night
surrounded by a shore
of retina and rain.

It was last night my stomach
forced a tidal wave back down
and this memory where I
had to reason my nausea into being,
that I read those poems of yours,
I could feel the finger behind the eyes,
gouging behind the eye,
to the eyesocket,
finding not more water,
but a boneless desert,
an arid fold of brain.

Sweet, the cycles of rain
following the footpath of the seasons
count them, the cycles of madness.
I hear the rain singing
on the mirror of the beast

What separates this tangle
of human flesh from that of beasts?
Those calves with their liquid eyes
imprisoned in cages so that their flesh
will stay succulent and tender for veal.
They suck my finger, the urge to nurse
is strong in one so young.
Their pink petal tongues
caress my index finger
and they know, somehow
they know it is wrong.

In their eyes I see the fish lens
reflection of myself and the summer sky
The smell of grass fire hangs heavily in the air.
Skirting the shores of the lake
every action demands an equal reaction.

We bring moldy hay inside the barn
with the mirror reflected sky
Are the mummified carcasses
of those born to young,
of those whose mothers
could labor no more,
the breach birth breed
breath, hangs heavily in the air.
Their choice was made for them.
We're always trying
to come to terms with our own death.

I am not a sailor.
These eyelids hold no water.
The eye is a cistern, a repository
in the arid eyeless place . .

Art, Poets, Technology panel, SSU

 

OLD ROAD, NICASIO

The old road under the reservoir, 

after 10 years of repeated flooding 

and summer exposure to the elements, 

emerges, the cracked mud is still visible 

on the shoulders of the old roadbed 

slowly losing its edges, it's

the same age as the lakebed, 

the same age as the lakeshore, 

the old cement bridge where once 

the creek flowed, all underwater

these past 10 years.

September? 1981

1/15/2015

POEM TO THE MAN NEXT DOOR

POEM TO THE MAN NEXT DOOR

Newly divorced, you sit inside
listening to country and western.
The cabin, smaller than life.
Your possessions spill out the door,
And your wife comes to visit with the kids.
You thought about having the two,
maybe three kids with you,
but something came up.
Maybe it was the trailer
and the old truck you like to take fishing,
or the motorcycle,
or maybe it was the job that stopped you.
Newly impoverished,
you wear your genitals on your heart,
hoping someone will notice.
And the dog peed on the tires
of one of your lovers
the next morning.
When the toaster oven dings
you consider answering the phone.
But the game on TV
is winding down to a conclusion.

8/1981
10/15/2015

I thought that I typed this poem up before, here's the original hand-written copy from Port Townsend, so that definitively dates it; this is an original draft, the final poem probably had different line breaks, and revisions, so this is a placeholder until I find my old work.

Mo, Self portrait (drawing)

This is a  halftone screen of a drawing. It doesn't capture the detail of the original. I don't know where the original is, or if it survived the floods.

Dynamic poetry at Garbo's (photos) Hass & Maxon

SONOMA COUNTY STUMP

Dynamic poetry at Garbo's

By Maureen Hurley and Alene Balsé

On August 17, Garbo's Monday Nite Poetry and Prose Series hosted Robert Hass and Suzanne Maxson. The performance was well attended and the audience captivated by the poets' personable prose style and universal appeal.

Hass began his reading with work by the exiled Polish poet Czeslaw Miloz,  the 1981 Nobel Prize winner in poetry.

On all fours they crawl out of the dugout.
Dawn. In the distance, 

Under a cold aurora, 

A slow blind train.

Hass, who also translates haiku, has been referred to as "one of the best kept secrets of well known American poets"; won the Yale Younger Series Poets Award in 1973 for his book, Field Guide. Also highly acclaimed most recent book, Praise, which does poetic justice to the English language. "Ideas and emotions are inseparably interwoven, and the pull of their ramifications steer the poem toward universality. " 

Each thing moves its own way 

in the wind. Bamboo flickers,
the plum tree waves, 

and the loquat
is shaken.

—from The Beginning of September

Maxson's tiny and unassuming presence made the impact of her socially conscious poetry all the more dynamic. From her first book, Our Lady of Names, she read poems of war-stricken El Salvador and Lebanon where 'bowls were filled with whitest yogurt" and beggars cried "bak- sheesh, baksheesh." She then read a poem about her son, "Gabriel on a Sunday," (See poem, this page) and we embark on a journey back to the gentleness of our experiences from that of the jolting reality of the world's harsh existence.

Hass's and Maxson's easy manner and casual humor made their appeal both genuine and personal and made for a wonderful evening of poetry on the River. As Hass commented, "how calm people's faces get when they hear poetry, how the lines smooth out on their faces.

MORNING AFTER

MORNING AFTER

The last Czechoslovakian stemmed glass
a guilty reminder on the drainboard,
its mate shattered as I washed it.
How many times have I left them on the table
from the evening before.

And if you came over for morning coffee,
you'd notice they were a matched pair.
Now, I can't have anyone over for dinner
because they might bring wine.

For days I've been thinking
it would be so easy;
a slip of the hand
too close to the faucet head
would shatter those matched orbs
staring accusingly at me.

The thin fluted stem
and curved shards of glass
like wings of fragile birds
nestle, flightless in my hand.

8/22/1981
rev 82, 85

THE EYE, INNOCENT OF THOUGHT

THE EYE, INNOCENT OF THOUGHT
      Where are your eyes?
      Vision slit through skin
      Plump as a ripe berry
      Slow as  quartz.
       —Susan Suntree

After 10 years, the road under the reservoir
is still visible in summer. Cycles of drought.
The edges of the old road are slowly diffusing.
Its edges the same age as the lake bed and the shore.
The old cement bridge where the creek ran is underwater.
The road only offers a departure point into the lake.
Ten years measures a cycle of madness.

Boarded up windows
are like the white eyes of the blind.
The peeling mirror in the hayloft door is blocking the light.
It throws back to the sky an image of itself
framed by the liquid green of oak leaves.
Behind the mirror, cobwebs gather dust in solitude.
Through a light shaft, dust motes drift on air currents.

I've noticed how the eyes of calves
are like twin pools of murky light
surrounded by an indigo shore of retina and vein.

Last night my stomach forced a tidal wave back down.
This morning I had to reason my nausea into being.
I read your poems, could feel the finger behind the eye.
The finger in the eye socket finding
not water but a boneless desert,
an arid fold of brain.
There is nothing to punish there.
The eye was innocent of thought.

Sweet, the cycles of rain follow the footpaths of seasons.
Count them, the cycles of madness.
I hear the rain singing in the manner of beasts,
Yet I am wholly human and, I can hear the singing of rain.
The sound reserved for the ears of beasts.

What separates this wretched tangle
of human flesh and bone from that of beasts?
Those liquid-eyed calves imprisoned in cages
So their flesh will stay succulent and tender,
suckle my finger, the urge to nurse strong in ones so young,
Their petal tongues caress the index finger
And they know, somehow they know it is wrong.

In their eyes I can see the fish-lens reflections
of myself and the summer sky.
Every action demands an equal reaction.
Lying in the moldy hay inside the barn
are the mummified carcasses
of these born too young,
of those whose mothers could labor no more.
The breech-birth breath hangs heavily in the air.
Their choice was made for them.

It is difficult to learn how to forgive
what we, and others have done
And pity is also self-inflicted.

I am not a sailor.
These islands hold no water.
The eye is a cistern in the arid toneless plain.
A repository for madness,
the eye, innocent of thought.

8/16/1981

ON THE ROAD TO TOFINO

As I drive down the road to Tofino
the only thing I can see is darkness.
How could he?

She's the girlfriend
of an old boyfriend of mine.
Men seeking air, kissing women
Women like glass jars
half full of wild grains.
Tongues of men
entering the mouths of women
Small tongues like cocks
too small for vaginas
Enter loosely into the center of women
Enter and the bitter grain
covers their tongues
Grain they cannot eat or digest
Women lie buried in the earth
and are covered with greenhouses
Greenhouses to grow babies
One, sometimes two greenhouses
When men enter their women
You can see the rich earth moving
covered with fine rich crumbs
When a man comes, the earth is
shoved up through the navel
into the greenhouses of women.

(not sure what this is about...as I'm typing it up in 2015,  I've forgotten the gist of it, other than the title has haunted me for nearly thirty years. But I do know I got a Dear John letter from Lee while I was up north on Vancouver Island. He was seeing Mimi Wheatwind. I felt so betrayed.

Of course I dated none of these poems, but it was a surprise to find them.

Port Townsend

This town, once the biggest port outside of New York in the 1890s, is where the Chinese had carved tunnels under the streets, some tunnels are still standing. Dock Street is gone now, Water Street is the main drag.

They had to call it uptown because the uppity ladies wouldn't shop here. Water Street, where the red light is now, is for the ferry traffic.

Across from the Town Tavern, is a building the old guy inherited on the condition that he improve it, but he was caught tunneling under Water Street. Some say he was headed for the bank. No one really knows for sure. The city fathers were upset when one day Water Street caved in right in front of his building.

The year before last, he had boarded up all the windows, and before that, all the metal Victorian cornices were taken off. This year, he's unboarding a few of the windows and is painting the sashes blue. Like the sky.

This town, once a whore's town, is now a literary town. All the poets are well read. It's still a whore's town. There are red lights shining on the streets at night and, after dark, the literary whores flood the streets like migrant workers in a tent city.

Tourists and Winnebagos with California license plates cautiously drive through town to the ferry dock. They come into the Town Tavern looking for something harder than the soft liquor license allows. And we stare at their improbable attire, women wearings nylons with shorts, and men in perma-press suits. All the old hippies here are working as bartenders, and caretakers. it's all a juggling act.

I keep coming back to this town like a bad penny. A friend of mine, Sharon Doubiago, moved here to escape a broken heart. Little do I know, that this year, my heart will be in the same repair shop. Hearts are not made of porcelain, but of grist and sinew and blood.

There's that poignant moment of initiation. We all recognize the place where broken hearts either mend, or evolve into some other plane.

Whore hearts, we're all whores with hearts of gold, the wrong color for blood. Gold, the correct color for lizard blood. As we sniff out the color-coded hearts of those around us, our lizard eyes narrow, we taste the air with our forked tongues, and we retreat into reptilian silence.

Tourists pour into the Town Tavern. You can tell what time of day it is by the number of disembarked people at the bar. Like the ebb and flow of waves, the oak and glass double-doors swing to and fro, as the tourist surging in from the ferry, feel the need to slake their great thirst.

The man I am having an affair with is having trouble finding the bedroom where he last left his heart. He thinks his capacity for love is greatly influenced by his capacity for pain. I'm a transient blow-in. There's the bond that ties us all together, here in this town of whores. Down at the bar, we paint it red.

August, 1981

WHIDBY ISLAND

The bloodless limit of the red tide reaches me, in the mountains.

I'm waiting for sickness to come after eating oysters and clams. 

The seaweed bobs like the heads of otters  in the inlet. 

Dizzy, the next day my fingers grown numb. 

Such a clear day. Hurricane Ridge in perfect sunlight. 

Not such a good day to die after all.

Mountain goat fur caught on some brush 

and hillside so steep you could step out one foot 

and land a hundred feet below. I nearly did.

The mountain goats and the two kids lying down 

are white on white snowfields

The kids, white against a white sky 

white T-shirts of young boys 

the bleached bones of logs in sand. 

The mast of the sailboat pierces the gray sky. 

Whidby Island cliffs, like the sides of beached whales. 

Whidby Island. The odor of salt tang in the air 

the almost overbearing odor.
A seagull cruises overhead
Red light/white light revolves 

on a red roof and white lighthouse.
Red of firebird rocks
Another seagull tackles the kelp

while I wait for symptoms of red tide.
The Cascades and the Coast Mountains 

meet head-on and collided into islands.
Kitsat Peninsula and the Gitsat Indians.

Once I hitch-hiked to K'san with totem carver, Vernon Stevens.
Old Terrace, Middle Terrace, Terrace and Kasan are all the same place. Gitsat Indians are becoming carvers of tolem polls once again. Argellite frogs with discrete price tags bark out place names: Puyallup, Dosewallops, Sequim Squim.
A diver walked down to the water throwing back the days catch. Segulls surround him like old men.

Kathleene West, a tired poet friend 

says to me three times 

I am just a fisherman's wife living in Port Townsend
I am a fisherman's wife.
I am the wife of a fisherman, 

waiting at home. 

I am tired of waiting.

I am tired of writing.

A slight breeze stirs the water in the cove, 

rippling water like watered silk. 

My neck hurts from an old whiplash.

For your body, I need Mr. Badger, the skeleton maker, to help me.
Thank you Leslie Silko, thank you Mr. Badger.
I'm a writer's ghost writing nothing because I'm not writing poetry.

The wings push mostly downward when the blackbird flies across the sky.

I met a man whose real name was Don John or John Don. Either way he writes a patch of blue opening up like an eye.

The sky imitates the blue of glaciers and blue hidden eyes of the north snow people.

The sea is quiet. No tongues lapping at the shore. These are the Straits of Juan de Fuca. If I sleep on the beach, will the water know the coast is but a thin line?

Argillite frogs with discrete price tags 

bark out place names: Puyallop,

Dosewallops, Squim, Sequim.

Bill Stafford's hat is soft like the slack corners of his mouth. From the brim a feather trembles, loosened from a bird years ago. The eyes reflect the talons still. Like me, Bill worked with kids in schools. PITS. Says there's more material for kids to write with in poetry than structured prose he said.

Waves of horses butcher your dreams. Marina Albert says. 

Language there's a secret language hidden within the language, the effect of syllables upon us.

The tribal influence would be the door
Among those who know. Not a chance to change is evident.

july? Aug 1981

10/15/2015

I can't make out most of the craft notes, and they're scattered in amid the prose. It reads like nonsense. Can't even read most of it. Maybe I'll revise it, whip it into shape. Or not.

Short haiku of sorts

I awaken in a glass house, 

the Straits blend into fog, 

the horizon, indistinct as this morning.

Two payphones in the basement. 

People wait to make long-distance calls. 

Slot machines collect change at the end of the line.

Evening sky the color of salmonberries
A dull grain sheen on the water 

an unseasonable hue.

Volkswagen engine valves clatter. 

House finches nesting in the eaves

rearrange themselves and chatter.

The face of the glacier gave way 

and 11 people died on Mt. Rainier.

Yet it floats, sublime, at dawn.

July? 1981

Port Alberni

Port Alberni, Vancouver Island – I overdrove my mark, a hitchhiker said she knew where I wanted to go, and we missed our turnoff, so I'm staying with her in a strange house. I know not where.

The moon is a rusted silver crescent hanging below Venus. Mountains fringe this place like shards of glass. Montgomery School Principal, Ken Lytle used to live here years ago, when he was a boy. The hills around Cazadero's Montgomery School are much like this place.

It is 50 miles away to Uclulet by water, it means safe harbor. Or, just water. A Nootka word. You ride the mail boat to get there – it's an eight hour trip. The road to Tofino is even longer. Uclulet looks like Point Reyes. I watch the same ocean here, as I would at home.

Ken Lytle spent some time in Port Alberni as a kid and hated it. I can see why. Port Alberni, Dante's Inferno of the Northwest is surrounded by snowcapped mountains. It has a gorgeous fjord that meanders 50 miles to the Pacific, it's a mile wide and a mile deep, but the brown oily water from the pulp mill, like flotsam. Paper pulp loosing from ships floats out to sea. The fish leaping to the surface gasping for air, ground from the pulpmill when it rains, it is an acid rain. Hell on earth.

I'm staying with friends in a rustic log cabin in Parksville. Pete Lang's wife Sarah is teaching me to belly dance. Downstep, thrust, downstep, thrust. Work down into the floor, not up into the sky. The outhouse has a blue plastic sky. I stepped on a slug, barefoot. I’m stuck to the earth now.

A friend of mine, Ken Lytle once threw a slug at his wife when they lived in Cazadero. And when I washed my jeans, there a slug was in the washing machine. There isn't any way to get slug glue off. Damned, those jeans are Calvin Kleins. I traded a pair of cowboy boots for them. The slug crawled through Ken’s wife’s hair. He said she washed her hair seven times. It never came out. But she washed that man right out of her hair. They are now divorced.

Sharon Doubiago said to write a story about your clothes. I think of Frida Kahlo. Sharon says that she still has the same clothes. From year-to-year, the stories about clothes stack up and accumulate like clothes in the closet. 

Once when we went out dancing in the town of Elk on the coast of Mendocino, the leotard I had scrounged from a trashcan, ripped down the back. I borrowed her special heart pin and then I lost it. It was found later on the dance floor, broken. We glued it back together – our friendship mended. Sort of.

Sharon will run away to Port Townsend to escape a broken heart. Did I trigger it when I lost her heart pin? 

Flora & Fauna Notes

Woolly mammoth tusks like ribs of a beached boat.

The tide becomes delayed
among the many islands and fjords. 

Gravitational pull of the sea and especially the moon, 

causes a bulging of the oceans
traveling along the world in a great wave. 

The crest of this wave is high tide
the trough is low tide.

Tidal range is greatest at Prince Rupert
and the Powell River where flood tides
from the north and south meet and drift. Tidal bore.

Acorn barnacles stand on their heads
and kick food into their mouths with feathery feet
Purple crabs are like porcelain, clams have 32 blue eyes.
Seaweed absorbs nutrients directly from the water.
Roots hold fast, piddock clams, great sculpins.

List the islands fjords and shelters inlets along this coast,

home for thousands of waterbirds. Common snipe.

The Fraser River drains one quarter of BC 

I have been to Salt Spring Island, and Mount Vesuvius.
I'm going down the road to Ganges.
All roads lead to Ganges on Salt Spring Island. 

Offshore islands have fewer species of plants and animals
different from the mainland.
The Queen Charlotte Islands,
continental slope, continental shelf,
continental drift on the edge
of the continental shelf of North America 

Backbone of mountains rises up
from the western shore the Queen Charlottes 

I am remembering the trumpeter swans and snow geese at Mount Lassen,
and carpenter ants, spotted slugs,  

the Georgia Straits, the way the ship rocked.

Sitka spruce, willow,
Douglas firs are not the final stage of a coastal rain forest,
deepening leaf litter, climax rainforest

the wet climate of mountains facing the sea 

the stableness of the vegetation
can only be attained after a thousand fire-free years 

tideland spruce can withstand constant wind
and saltspray of the exposed coastline.
Sitka spruce, a protective buffer

Lions of the Sea
Glaciers never reached Triangle Island
burrowing seabirds.

Nothing in nature is static
the land, the sea, the climate,
the plants and animals of today
are nothing but a passage
a passing expression of a relentless process of change.

Earth air and water borne by the glacier
heated by the sun. Alpine tundra
dark dwarf willows
Northern Lakota and Plateau
the boreal forest, the montane forest
the grasslands, the dry interior, the bitteroots
the dense rain forest
and the Coast Forest in rain shadow
the Olympics, the more specific name wins
Salmonberry, salal, willow, blueberry, and western hemlock

What is this dice game played by the Micmac
500 years old
counting sticks, six round bone dice
made of walrus bone

wet piñata, loose hair
embroidery this willow cradle
has been decorated with silk ribbons
what about my silk shirt hanging on display 150 years from now? 

The value of trade silver
beaver was the standard of trade

called it the fire breaks to symbolize the meeting of chieftains

the cave of petroglyphs
long ago when the world was young
animals held their winter dances in caves.
animals changing into human form
and this so embarrassed them
that they gave man their dance 
In order that he not reveal their secrets.

Nootka Indian masks capture the initiate
Tshimshan and Kitsat want to call three eagles
to explain the universe.
Cosmology is the relationships between peoples
the supernatural is preserved symbolically
masks make the natural and supernatural world visible
they explain our relationship
and take hold

human life depends upon a healthy structured natural world 

to ensure balance Indians conducted ritual seasonal changes
crisis economic activity
the shaman kept the balance
between the three worlds
the soul capture
scattering of eagle down for peace
the potlatch
the seasons
the ceremonies
art makes the supernatural world visible

This is a lot of gibberish to clean up! I must've been planning to use it in some writing. 

Maryna Albert & DJ Hamilton (not my photo)

Maryna Albert & DJ Hamilton. I never did learn his name. He ran off and joined the Pickle family Circus

Puck Goat, Mt. Olympus, Lunasa (photos)

Mt.Olympus from Hurricane Ridge. From an old slide—early 1970s, or  1981?

On the northern slopes of Mount Olympus: the ancestral sweep of the mountain, shadows are suspended across entire valleys. Talus and wildflowers in blue are the only signs of life in this severe landscape.

I am taller than the subalpine spruce forest at my feet. Like Gulliver in a Liliputian landscape. I must be way above treeline. I can almost touch the sky.  Small juniper trees hug the ground, they spread out mat like, a living carpet at my feet. The trees may be diminutive, but their berries are full-size.

A melting cornice of of snow slides off the razorback ridge and makes a second ledge of snow, well on its way to becoming a glacier. Below me, a string of glacial melt pools in aquamarine and teal, decorated with chunks of snow, icebergs in the making. 

I had to take off my telephoto lens because the animals here have no fear. Marmots shuffle up to investigate my feet and they size me up. I guess they don't get too many hikers on this steep slope. Or I look like a big marmot to them.

The only way to escape these droves of flies, is to keep on walking, or stand against the wind. I keep on walking.

I've lost count of the miles. I've come farther on one day that most round trip hikes. I keep reminding myself I have to walk the same distance back again, that each step forward is the half-way mark back to the trailhead.

But a part of me never wants to return to that place I came from. So I keep on walking. I have run out of trail. Literally. I am half-way to Marathon. My race against my pain is still not won. So I push ever on. The talus rings like fine crystal in someone else's bed as I stumble over compacted shale.

I take in alpine roses, lupine, larkspur, rock cress, a veritable Turkish carpet. Wallflowers, cinquefoil, buckwheat, Indian paintbrush, sky pilot, phlox, stonecrop—it's a carpet bazaar. A concuspiance of flowers stands taller than the tallest juniper.

In this dainty landscape, butterflies soar like hawks, and birds are the size of bears. A complex mosaic of lichen and moss grows on the ground, black lettuce-like leaves with frothy petticoats of pale green, dresses the rocks.

I want to get down on my hands and knees to worship the tiny Japanese gardeners who live here. My hand orchestrates a symphony of striated scree alternated with grand sweeping swaths of flower gardens. Beauty before me as I walk.

A hummingbird hovers, checks me out, then dives off the edge of the cliff. He takes my breath away. I lay down and peer down into a pocket valley, blue pimpernel and sky pilot and sky are one thing.

Sometimes the junipers achieve enough height for a mouse to hide beneath them. They eye me curiously, and rotate seeds in their paws as they nibble at the edges of pine nuts. Dark mauve phalacea is like bruised skin, amid the pearly everlasting.

A talus crest is black with lichen and weathered varnish. Mount Olympus? I am lost traversing range after range, I am deep in the heart of these mountains, trying to escape my own depths.

A fresh rockslide area glows coppery pink against all that dark scree. A golden mantled marmot stand up to salute his allegiance to the wilderness. With his back to me, he whistles, then screams to the valley below. I am not the enemy. Friend of your friend.

Deer graze on the subalpine spruces, they devour this fragile landscape. I drowse in the warm sunlight. Pink and white pine heather bells shudder and nod in the breeze coming in from the west. Harbinger of sunset. 

I awaken with a start. Another deer appears, a buck, two-pronged with velvet, he eyes me, sniffs the air. Drops his head to pluck tender pine shoots. I was sleeping where the deer come to feed.

These steep talus slopes are held in place by the roots of flowers, no grass or moss or soil.

On Hurricane Ridge, and here, deep in the mountains, the Rocky Mountain goats eat the precious patches of soil. They're looking for salt, someone said. They paw at soil pockets, they eat the soil, they lick the stones, they lick the hiking path—searching for traces of lost salt. They are not a native species. My traitorous tears are made of salt. Perhaps displaced mountain goat will eat them.

The bleached bones of juniper, a skeleton hugs the rock outcropping. Patches of stonecrop form light cream-colored oases on the hillside. Life and death are one thing.

The intense purple of lupine, and the yellow of wallflower takes my breath away. The papery leaves of the pasqueflower tremble on the slightest breeze. I watch the antics of a furry jumping spider dressed in black and rust.

The sizzling heat rising up from the talus creates a shimmering horizonline. The edge of the ridge drops off from sight and all the flowers keep nodding their heads in the breeze, as if in agreement. There are so many flowers that I leave bruised footprints behind me. I keep walking up the path that follows the top of the ridge, hoping it will go on forever. It does not disappoint.

The path cuts along the side of a slope, so steep, it's like walking on the edge of a box. It drops a long way down, it's little more than a goat trail and it veers off to the left to the lake camp, set in shadows. To the right, are the valleys and ridges that lead up to Mount Olympus and to the Elwah River Valley.

The track is no longer a human path. I begin free-climbing towards the summit, inching closer to that elusive spine of ridge. I tell myself to be careful, don't trust the rotten rock.

Another hand grasp and toehold: I'm almost to the summit. Hair-raising. I've gone way past my limits. But still I push forward. I'm thinking this stuff is for the goats. What am I doing here, alone, so far from civilization? No one know where I am. But, having come this far, I want to look at the face of Mt. Olympus.

Silently, white. Above me a jagged shape looms. I take it in at eye level, powerful forelegs, and I look up to a white fur chest. Black horns and yellow eyes appear. Am I hallucinating?

His beard, and breath tells me he's real. Uh-oh. This Rocky Mountain goat coming down from Mt. Olympus has right-of-way. Cars going uphill may have right away, but then I'm not a car, and he has sharp black horns and the surefootedness of hooves.

The rules of right-of-way on a precipice is not to stop in a dangerous place. He has no hesitation as he advances toward me. There's literally no place to go. I back down the crevice, the small of my back tucked into the base of cliff that arcs down 2000 feet of scree. The angle of declination will not stop my descent into space. The angel of declination.

The goat hesitates, he looks at me. We make eye contact and we each make a silent pact. He has to pass right by my feet. There is nowhere else to go. I drop my gaze, and look down at my boots. I present no challenge, i make no eye contact. I empty my mind and I become wind, rock and sky. I come and go in peace, at will. We are one thing.

He does not challenge me to a duel. He carefully passes me, his fur is silken snow. He is a young ram, ousted from the herd. So I know there will not be others following him.

So I follow him down the spine, back to where I came from. I am shaking, adrenalin, fear, a rite of passage. I'm taking photographs of his back. They're not as good as the one I got as he appeared over the horizon. I took photos first then realized the potential danger I was in. The camera is an extension of arm, an automatic reflex.

The goat is eating his dinner, he is pawing up the plants to get at the minuscule pockets of soil hoarded there. He eats the earth, craving salt. I smell of salt and tears. He is not afraid of me as long as I move slowly.

We stay like this, entranced for an hour or more, in the evening light, the goat and I, before I descend back down the mountain at twilight. Northern lights dancing in the distance.

Something truly memorable has happened. A wordless quest, answered. A heart mended. I return back down the mountain a different person than that grieving woman who left behind her sorrow in the fog shrouded dawn.

August 1, 1981
October 11, 2015
(Found in a journal, most of it is verbatim, I added the context when I retyped it.)

Anacortes

August 1 & 2

I'm at the Anacortes fair selling jewelry with Leo and Terry. We're watching the Bosco boys live. I catch their juggling act for the first time. It's rough. I don't mind. 

Terry says "every time I see you, you've moved a little farther north."

DJ hugs me. it's hard to pick up a welcome hello hug after a hard goodbye hug two days previously. He hugs me again. Just in case.

As the day wears on, their act improves. So do we. During stolen moments between their acts and my breaks, we go off in different directions at nightfall looking at each other questioningly. 

Next day, their act improves, and we know once again our friendship is solid and between breaks we hug and kiss and talk about northern tier, how that joke cost them potential money during the pass the hat, because Anacortes is a working town. 

They don't laugh at those kind of jokes. It doesn't matter. They juggle the clubs.

We pass each other at the fair we stop hug and kiss. Soon it's time for goodbye. He says, "I don't know whether to say goodbye or, see you next weekend."

"This time it's for real," I say. We can't seem to untangle our tongues. I give him a poem about kisses, and our act improves.

WHILE WAITING FOR THE ANACORTES FERRY

AT PARADISE MEADOWS

AT PARADISE MEADOWS

At the foot of Mt. Rainier

Chief Seattle sat pondering the face of the god. 

Did he know of what was to come? 

On the slopes of the mountain 

I bathe my feet in hot pools 

and wander in fields full of flowers. 

Larkspur, lupine and columbine.

These meadows were made by beavers 

felling alders to engineer the snowmelt into dams, 

this place where history seeps into my pores.

Tehama, like a breath 

the name of the mountain.

Snatches my mind away.

Circled in fog floating in a blue sky.

Underneath the mantle, the steady drip of rain 

shrouds the face of Tehema.

Across the sound, Chief Seattle, 

with his two wives following behind, 

was buried in his dugout canoe, 

in full view of the mountain.

Among the steaming pools and snowmelt 

I pick flowers on the slopes of paradise

wondering why it has to be so hard. 

The upheaval, and the price of beaver pelts,

smallpox decimating entire villages.

All that's left is the name of the mountain —

Like a breath, the name floats on the air—

Tehema, Rainier.

Tehema.

7/1981

 Port Townsend, Washington

added 10/16

minor revision/line breaks

ACROSS THE BLUE OF GLACIERS

ACROSS THE BLUE OF GLACIERS

A thin line of flowers stretches
across the blue of glaciers

Mountains meet head on
like rippling bones bleached gray

Glistening whales resurface among the ice flows

Their spume spraying great hunks of sky

Across the water  blue streaks on sparkling snow

The alcoholic snores of glaciers calving,
wraps around the heart like a blanket
as we snuggle in, summer nightfall on the tundra.

I am not a fisherman's wife
throwing back the day's catch

The snow is the color of roses,
red roses, and I dream of primordial suns.

7/1981
Port Townsend, Washington
added 10/16

Pulsbo

Pulsbo

July 30, 1981: I'm back in Pulsbo again. An old song, an old saw set in the key of honkeytonk blues. Ten days after I said I was leaving, this inertia sets in… The feeling that I'm blowing it, but I'm trying to be clear, to be honest… The snags of human emotions are things really as complex as they seem? I keep pushing forward, thinking each time the dilemma will be the last, things will improve. Sometimes, the quagmire is right out the back door. Human interrelationships, the complex web of reason spread before me. We are each spinners of the web we weave.

7/30/1981

10/15/2015

FROSTBITE

FROSTBITE

The glacier rose up like a tongue
lolling out of the frigid mouth of the water

Ptarmigans, half white, half brown feathers

chuckled in the low undergrowth
of huckleberry and mountain heather.

The sun warmed us as our feet
crunched over bauchy ice and rotten snow
as we approached the summit.

A thunderbolt cracked,

stirring the thick air and our senses.
Ptarmigans dove for cover
as snowflakes covered their mottled backs.

Hypothermia begins
with a rhythmic rotation of frozen fingers.

Soon numbed cheeks cease to sting,
earlobes feel warm. And skin turns from red to blue.
White patches of creamy skin
are the first signs of frostbite.

One begins to feel the need for sleep,
such euphoric warmth, and dreams,
a jumbled series of memories
out of proper sequence, taking you further.
Soon you reconstruct your memories
to fit the shape of snowdrifts
and then you float into that warm tide
of snow, smiling.

7/29/1981
Port Townsend, WA
added 10/16

THIS KISS

THIS KISS 

    for DJ Hamilton

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. 8/81; 4/87 Sonoma County Stump 8/18/81

On the Dosewallips Trail, take 2

Stones sink into the snow leaving holes that drop down into the pack. The pack rearranges itself with a slow downhill crunching steps down from its own weight.

The roaring of last nights trees gives way to the multiple drone of today's flies. I am the only living thing around. The horse flies follow me for miles, flying a halo around me, each wanting to claim my flesh as his own.

A few clouds drift by, leaving folded shadows like black snow patches draped over the peaks. Talus slides encourage the flowers to grow in long lines downward, one plant below the other, the upper offering protection to the ones below, and the ones below offering protection in turn, and so on.

As I hike on the trail, my feet crunching on rocks slowly convert the finely shredded talus into dust.

The mountains are breathing the honey of flowers. The panorama of the Olympic Mountains becomes too beautiful for words. Soon the eyes ceases to see. I drop over the crest into the eastern rim where the starkness of The Brothers and Anderson Pass pacify my burning, too bright eye.

The vegetation too is different on this side. Taller shrubs and flowers. Also less variety. The trees are tortured trunks leaning upward into the hill for stability. Sometimes they crawl back up the slope 4 feet or more along the ground, trying to get back to where they first set root.

July 1981
added 10/16

Horseflies on the Dosewallips Trail

The roaring of last night trees gives way to the multudinous drone of today's flies.

Scattered stones sink into snow leaving holes that drop way down into the snowpack. The pack rearranges itself as it slips downward from its own weight.

I am the only living thing around. The horseflies follow me for miles, flying a halo around me, each wanting to claim my flesh as his own. To the left, the Inland Passage, the Cascades and Mount Baker, are all dreaming, tucked in a layer of marine mist.

Scattered clouds drape folded shadows of black ravens over the snowfields and peaks.

Talus slides encourage flowers to grow in long lines downward, one plant below the other, the upper plant offering protection to the ones below, and so on, all the way down the slope, in vivid color.

As I hike on the thin trail, my feet convert the finely shredded talus into dust.

The mountains are breathing the honey of flowers.

I run into another backpacker. I can't even trade my flies with him and he is sweaty and tired too.

The panorama of the Olympics is too beautiful for me to take in–soon I cease to see them. Blinded by such beauty, I become blind to it.

I drop over the crest into the eastern rim where the darkness of the Brothers and the Mount Anderson massif pacify my burning, too bright eye. I traverse up the Dosewallips River. So much to see: Grand Lakes, Moose Lake. I can't take it all in. 

I look back in order to look forward, and realize that these are the same mountains you can see from Seattle. They say Doquebatl, enraged, changed a woman into Mount Rainier and her son into Little Tahoma.

The small inhaled double chirp of the striped chipmunk is the only song in this still landscape.

July 1981

rev 10/15/2015

Oral History: The old fisherman said

The old fisherman said: (I didn’t get his name).

I'm originally from East Washington. Always wanted to fish. So I got myself a boat. Sold my ranch. Always wanted to see the ocean. Wanted to fish. Wanted to ocean fish.

 I wound up in a partnership. I had a gas store back in the day, those were too loose and fancy free days, I was in a partnership. See that gas store, the feller paid for half of it. Then he wanted me to buy him out. I didn't have the money, and he gave it to me.

Then one day out of the blue, I was out of business. I sold it and bought me a another boat, a cruiser 24 feet, by golly. I fished it a year. Then I got another boat. Fished two or three more years. 

Met a fellow down in Glencove, I traded my boat in for three or four lots. Then I traded those lots for a 30-foot cruiser. I converted it into a trawler and finished eight or nine years. Salmon mostly. 

Yeah, moneywise, I made a good deal. Made $2000. Good money then, by golly. I could've traded the two of those lots and had the lots and the boat yeah.

I live right on the beach now. No home, no boat. Yeah, but that fella, he had a heart attack and died in his sleep. And then his two brothers took over. They'll inherit the lots I owned, and the trailer and the boat. And damned if they didn't sell at all for hundred grand. 

To think I got it all going with that first boat that I paid $700 for, after I sold my ranch.

I felt like hell today, my wife, she went downtown, and maybe she'll bring me some dinner. Yeah, I fished eight or nine years for salmon. I'll be 80 next month. Doubt if I'll make it through the winter. My dog's 17 years old. He's deaf. Been that way for years. He doesn't pay much attention to my wife. Yes sir, he's a one-man dog. Yes.

7–29–81 Jefferson County Beach, Port Townsend, Washington

GIRAFFES

The giraffe

The two ffs in giraffe
are like two giraffes
running through
the word giraffe.

The two F's run
through giraffe
like two giraffes.

The butterfly

The butterfly flies up
like powder 

to a woman's face
and drifts down
like a woman's face 

into powder.


The electric eel

The electric eel slides
through the water
forming different words
as it goes
When it loops around itself

to spell the word eel
it lights up.


A sudden wind
is a Qualicum
is something  

like a sudden wind,
like a Chinook.

Qualicum.

July 29? 1981
rev 10/15/2015