Four sketches (art)

four quick in-class contour line drawings (not sure of the year)

Oral history collected in Windsor, 1983

In the 1880s, 5 acres of prunes would support a family. In the days before refrigeration, they were a valuable crop. The Russians grew root vegetables in Sebastopol for Fort Ross. All those people in Alaska needed vitamins.

Villa Chanticleer was built by bootleggers. There were cars with false bottoms. Rum runners. Grappa was made north of Santa Rosa. My grandfather worked at night. He didn’t speak much about it. There was machine gun fire every Friday night. The Coast Guard. As kids we’d get red lights and run along the beach so the Coast Guard would come, with lights flashing.

People came out west for gold, and to work on the railroad. Everyone had a garden. And everyone was building something. We worked 18 hours a day in May. The barley crops grew in six weeks. There are 55 minorities in China. They were a landless people. It’s like El Salvador today.

It is strange to be a minority and one’s own country. In 1856 to 1858, the people refused to pay taxes, and all the land was foreclosed. Every country I’ve been in has a minority. If it’s not race, it’s color if it’s not color, it’s skin.

During the Civil War, Santa Rosa and Petaluma raised an army. Thats why there’s the Shiloh cemetery in Windsor—it was made during the Civil War. (There are McClellans buried there—as in the General George McClellan who was pro-Confederacy. Both sides of the equation were represented in Sonoma County—the pro-Union Yankee Petaluma Guard and Emmet Rifles in suppressed a secessionist skirmish in Healdsburg. The Battle of Washoe House, is perhaps, the most comical, if apocryphal Civil War story. The story goes, Petaluma raised a militia and marched north on Confederate Santa Rosa, but the day was hot, and they got no further than the roadhouse, where they drowned their fury in suds.)

My grandmother used to tell me of the General Slocum disaster of the 1860s. New York. It was a school outing. It was a paddlewheeler steamer. My mother couldn’t go because she was from the wrong church. (Lutherans from Little Germany. Few of the women and children survived. After the disaster, the community dissolved). That’s why I’m here. My father was a tailor from Paris. And here we were in Windsor picking prunes to survive.

Anonymous, Oral history collected in Windsor, 1983.

But I didn’t name my informant. He sounds like he could be Chinese, or more likely German. I was probably going to turn it into a poem and never did. I was also doing a lot of Elderhostel teaching in those days, and people would tell me stories so it could’ve come from a workshop. Parentheses are mine, to make some sense of the story. Added 2020

Poets of the Vineyard award, First Place, Free Verse (for what poem?)

Poets of the Vineyard award, First Place, Free Verse
(not sure for what poem, I've a note that it's for FEAST OR FAMINE, but I think that isn't right. They didn't list the poem on the certificate. I never thought to write the info on the back...)
Sonoma County Chapter, California Federation of Chaparral Poets
Winnie Fitzpatrick, President

TENDING THE GARDEN (Merry Christmas Boschka)

TENDING THE GARDEN

My grandmother sends her love

She says you should try more carrot juice
made fresh. 30 carats a day.

Sounds excessive to me
but then grandmothers usually are.

That's why we love them so.
Their wisdom, prairie flowers of thought.
The buffalo robe is spread
on the ample laps of grandmothers.

This robe is your robe, my robe, our laps part.
She wants to know
how the gooseberry bush is doing,
do you need another?

She tends the garden like a robe

The garden is spread before us
like a lamb of hope, of love.

You're the mother-friend I never had

You are the love of grandmothers,
of mothers, of daughters.
Merry Christmas Boschka,
I love you.

She tends to the garden
she tends the garden
she tends the garden.

12/25/1983?
added 11/16

RRWG reading at the Burbank Activity Center with Donna Champion, Marianne Ware, Lee Perron, Pat Nolan, Gail King, Zara Altair, Bonnie Olsen, Boschka Layton, Maureen Hurley,

Dream journal

Jim Byrd was steering for me as I read directions from the map. The wheels caught on the lip of the road, nearly plunging us off the edge. Laughing, we pulled into the train station. Near the depot, a group waited in the warm sun, shelter from the brisk winter wind.

An old couple stood in front of a bench. He stumbled, and fell face up, his cane pointed up accusingly at the sky. He said, help me. I can’t breathe, as he slipped away. I watched, frozen to the spot. My God, A man is dying in a crowd of strangers who don’t even notice his passing. I stood rooted to the spot, seconds pass in what seemed like an eternity.

Someone jumped out of the crowd as I cried for help. Ambulance! No time to ask questions. She administers mouth to mouth, but it is too late. What is it like to pressure lips against the lips of the dead? Is it like a dog licking your lips?

And ambulance siren cuts the distance in half.

On the banister, fastened by red sealing wax, snapshots of the old man. His wife says we only just returned from a pottery workshop. One photo shows him intently working at the potters wheel. The clay slop has murdered his clothes.

To have lived such a full life. Dying seems less threatening, is if anything could be anything other than dying, if one lives a life to its fullest.

Are my assumptions naïve? From the banister, I gather up a checkered cloth filled with reptiles— lizards, geckos and two napping mantled ground squirrels the size of cats.

One sleepy rodent yawns luxuriously like a cat, and stretches. His mouth closes down on my index finger, and I feel the gentle strength of a sense of his incisors. I am afraid he will draw blood. Slowly I remove my finger from his mouth. They curl up tightly together, and go to sleep.

The lizard to go wild. Bluebellies, alligators, geckos, iguanas—all dashing after each other in a mad frenzy Mr. snapping their jaws and maiming each other. I am startled and frightened by all of this. One iguana grinds his jaw sideways instead of laterally and the inside of his mouth is lavender, his skin is forest green and he snaps to kill, I am glad they run in the direction they do, and not towards me.

Boys Hot Springs 12/9/83 dream journal

The Paper’s holiday gift guide: sensual & sensible (photos)

 

 

The Paper, Trina Castleberry death (photos)

Not a front page photo credit I wanted. Trina was one of my young poetry students.

 

WESTERN MOTEL, 1957

—from an Edward Hopper painting

A green Ford hugs the driveway. 

Adobe walls collect warmth from the sun.
Inside, the waiting woman’s maroon dress

vibrates, sunlight divides the room into shadow,

and sand scatters across the vast dunes 

in random patterns.

1983

No idea when, in my Napa Poetry Conference journal. Probably written in class. added 2020

THE DAY KENNEDY DIED

Jack was the ultimate myth,
a movie star of politics.
Marilyn was too demure
with the older hero played by Reagan.
We headed for Nam willingly,
Some say, we were led by the stars.
We’d do anything for that smile, those eyes.
And what did Marilyn do besides smile?
Somewhere, someone sings
a song of three oranges.
Women wilted in the heat
because they opened up too soon.
What eyes reflect this desert thirst?

People keep talking of Kennedy 20 years later.
How they were afraid to go out into the streets.
How Kennedy’s eyes followed them home,
as if that link were responsible.
We travel from place to place.
Someone asks, where were you
the day Kennedy was shot?
I feel like I’m falling back into the 60s,
searching for a joint and a dry country.

I painted my binder black with shoe polish
the day Kennedy died. I was in the third grade.
Ginny, a dancer, cries as she describes the art of ballet.
Women on a pedestal, kept in the boudoir.
So, keep up on your toes ladies.
Uphold a 200-year-old tradition.
In the aerobics studio, women stomp to the music.
They don’t want the tradition.
Ginny weeps in the isolation that is Chico.
We huddle around the table,
more alone together, than together alone.
It drizzled the day Kennedy died.
An Air Force man from Oregon tells me
about cross country skiing at base camp.
We need to keep the Hamilton Air Force Base
in the military, he says, in case of attack.
As if a tidal flat surrounded by coastal hills
would ward off a nuclear blast.
Some 20 years later, I can still see Kennedy’s eyes
reflected green off the water, in the streets,
and people hesitate, afraid to return a smile.

11/22/1983
Chico

BLUE BOWL

A row of red trees, a cerulean bowl
rolled between upturned palms.
The weight of the bowl, like an ocean.

A man in a red jacket
ride his bike up main street
with a large blue parrot
clinging to his shoulder.
Blue feathers like tide pools
on a bright red sea.

The dark room wraps itself around you.
Your eyes, darkness falling from your face
as you breathe in the light.
Your eyes gather in the moths,
and irregular fluttering of hearts
fanning the flames,
burnt wings rekindled in your eyes.

11/21/83
One of the few poems I dated. From NPC journal
I think that last stanza become Mothlight

Waiting for what?

Sometimes I wake up mornings wondering why I’m still waiting and what is it I’m waiting for. I am afraid to look into the eyes of old people because I don’t want to see what is human in myself. Too many things make me cry. I avoid looking into the eyes of the world because I am reminded of what is human is in myself. My heart is a door, the red rimmed eye of the clock is pushing us ever onward.

1983, no date November? Next poem is 11/21.

Letter from Dave Brubeck NEED TEAR SHEET & PIX

Dave wrote another letter to The Paper praising my article and photos.

Dave’s letter to the editor, The Paper, December, 1983

Little John Chrisley. NEED TO ADD PIX & STORY

Little John Chrisley was an up-and-coming blues harmonica player, a child prodigy who played with all the greats, and then he disappeared. I did a story on him at the Sonoma County fair. For the West Sonoma County paper. Need tear sheet and pix

Whatever Happened to Little John Chrisley? 1/20/1998 metro publishing

MORE FRAGMENTS: OROVILLE 1983

OROVILLE 1983

Waiters silent mouth cowboy songs
a silent croon, unintelligible, forgettable.
One of the good old boys
butters his toast up the local law,
the biggest, and the only game in town.

11/1983
added 9/2016

WINTER DOLMEN Only have Napa workshoped copies, not final v.

WINTER DOLMEN
 
I.  The old horse trails have merged back into the brush
becoming interlaced with the newer deer trails—
a netting thrown over the steep hillside.

The humanness of my scent 
will divert the night's deer 
and they will weave another path around my trespass.

The ground is bathed in red leaves.
At the Rock, I sit and watch bluejays dive
over rounded shapes of live oaks.
As they follow the shape of the tree down in their dive
breasting the top of the tree,
they sculpt the air along its side.

At the switchbacks,my mare would stop to catch her breath,
her soft nostril flaring, her softer eye blinking.
Sometimes I rode her down from the top of the hill
sometimes I ran on ahead of her.

At the switchbacks, her strong front legs would lock, pivot and turn
as the momentum of her hind end swung around
widening each turn. Sometimes, in my dreams I see her 
roaming free in the hills.
Now all that's left are subtle ridges hidden in the brush.
The foot finds a surer path even as the undergrowth 
beats back the body.

II.  From the steep height of the Rock, 
I take mental notes. Measurements without numbers, 
angles without degree or scale
and compare it with the sheer cliffs of Yosemite.
As a teenager, I hung out over the edge 
of El Capitán without safety ropes. 
This rock juts out with the same purpose. 
My legs dangle down into lush green space. 
Below my feet, civilization falls back 
revealing toy houses, woodpiles and cars 
scattered in the folds of the hills,
looking off into this vastness, the word becomes smaller.
 
III.  I always wanted to be a red-tailed hawk
because I understood how the curve of its beak matched
the symmetry of its talons.
When I fed the injured one yellowed chicken necks
the hawk's beckoning eye approved of the shape 
of its cousin's puckered neck.
After the meal, the hawk sharpened its talons
waiting to carve my cheek to fall away like softened butter.
I turn the other cheek too late.
 
IV.  The deer cross the burned clearing,
their coats the same shade as the burned grass stubble.
In the charred landscape, the movement of white legs
pinpointed against the grass
are like reverse shadows cast by a negative.
In the tall grass their legs cast no shadow.
Their backs dark against the gold.

 On the slopes of Mt. Barnabe, 

crocheted to the flanks and gullies, 

trees leave gold meadows encircled like jewels. 

The trees hid the Indian graveyard. 

My grandfather knew where it was hidden 

but refused to tell anyone, saying, 

they needed their place of the dead, too. 

I spent years in those wooded folds
searching for stone altars and moss covered ribs.
Under the soft bleached bones I thought I'd find
dark garnets winkling slowly in the mottled light.
Instead, great rib bones of Herefords pushed up through the rocks
along the dry creekbeds. Tufts of hair, sinew and gristle--
dried clean, hard like amber.

I'm still trying to follow the old paths.
My feet remember smoother paths but the newer trails
are clogged with the detritus of fallen trees.
The god I believe in allows me to measure
the free fall of a bluejay's dive, the height of a hill,
the color of grass.

Paths, like river packed with log-jams during spring thaw.
Living on the edge of this winter dolmen
is like the crisp wind blowing off fallen snow.
The years are the true movers of paths.

10/28/83
(an earlier draft–the final version was corrupted, no final hard copy. See below.)

RRWG reading at Coffee & Co., emcee Maureen Hurley

THE SUNNY SIDE OF THE BLUES: Interview with Bo Diddley, Mark Naftalin, Little John Chrisly, Sonoma County Blues Festival

Double tap to read the rest of the article. I tried every configuration, this is the only one that worked. I will transcribe it later.

Richard Salzman drawing, piano, from Obligatory Hug

Obligatory Hug, Oct. 1983, Russian River Writers' Guild, drawing

The Paper: Pineapple Princess interview (photos), Opening the Mouth

I was hired to take photos of his memorabilia for cards. Trina Castleberry was a poetry student of mine. She was killed in a car accident not long after I took these photos.

Obligatory Hug, Sept 1983, Franklin St. Clubhouse, Santa Rosa (Maureen Hurley & Charles Entrekin)

7 POEM FRAGMENTS, no date, end of summer 83?

Music running across prairies
under milky trees and golden silence,
it roars across the evening sky
and shakes the essence of night from the trees.



On the hillsides, raspberry bushes
overlook the meadow. The birds sing.
Tonight, the moonlight shines in the trees,
last night of summer.

1983?


Seedlings push earth in musical notations
A violin breaks the glass
A worm dances to the music.




Spiders huddling
over corpses of the dead
wringing their hands





 Eating rabbit looks like a skinned cat
and taste like dry chicken
Tougher stomach muscles than the chickens
Eating rodents, Romans eating dormice,
sleepy mice kept in clay pots
for the fattening winter



Outside the quiet classroom
children yelling
floating sound resonates in the air
like the loneliness of a fever.



So sorry I broke into your glass house
but I fell off the stairs I needed a bath.
The door was open and the cat
hadn't been fed in three days
and it was a stone's throw away from the fridge.




Floral clocks of darkness
are singing to the rocks of love
and fish sleep out of the rainbow
and petals fall from the teeth of poetry
while I sit looking pretty writing poetry.

September 1983?
added 9/15/2016
I probably wrote these in class, teaching CPITS
(next poem is Her mask of attention slips...if that helps)


SHORT POEMS 81-85

MASK OF COUNTERFEIT HEIGHTS

Her mask of attention slips
as she turns toward the sun
Clocks of sovereign weight
sit in rapt attention
Through her open window
a radio blares
to the rhythm of flapping laundry
next door
The judge's mask slips
Who gave her reason
to tilt volumes of abysmal trees
on their sides
don't they know she is a financier
of earthquakes?

alas, no date.

RRWG reading, Franklin St. Clubhouse, Charles Entrekin, Maureen Hurley

ELEGY FOR MARY WALSH

ELEGY FOR MARY WALSH
The atomic bomb was developed under the code name of the Manhattan Project.
Those involved with the project died within three decades of cancer.
—to Jane Walsh Reilly

Grandma said:
Julia took the kids:
Mary, her sister, and the boy twins
to Colorado for a better education.

There wasn't much in Nevada,

and there was some trouble with the marriage.

My grandmother's half-cousin Bill was a handsome man.

He was the number-one son

and ran the Home Ranch in Austin, Nevada.

Julia O'Leary came out from Bantry to marry Bill.

The family was deadset against the marriage,

They were first cousins, you know.

And Mary's sister was brilliant too

but she was institutionalized in Denver.

Darwin's parents were first cousins too.

There was something off about his sister as well.

It works that way with marriages between first cousins

genius and idiot: flip sides of the same coin.

Maybe that's the Almighty's way of keeping things separate.

It was during the war years, I remember,

Mary was chosen right out of high school

to work on a secret project for the government.

When they were testing for mathematics and science,

Mary got one of the highest scores in the country

and she went to work back east.

It wasn't until later we found out

it was the Manhattan Project

one of the government's best kept secrets.

No one knew anything about it.

We didn't hear from her for years,

and learned of her death announcement

when it appeared in the papers.

Here I was, first cousins to her,

and even I didn't know.

There was one short line about her work.

I heard, all who worked on it died,

but no one blamed the project.

The first time I saw Mary at Home Ranch

was back in the '20s the little toddler

standing by the adobe wall

and Julia talking, talking, talking

I was dazed because that child,

her voice was like a bell.

She was so perfect,

I thought I'd seen an angel.

And Julia, looking at me so quizzically

That was the pity of it. I didn't explain.

And her, Mary, clinging to her mother's skirts

as if she'd done something wrong,

crying hysterically,

Mommy, mommy, I'm not a bad girl. Mommy.

9/83

The Scatman comes to town. DATE.

IN HONOR OF SCATMAN 
BY MAUREEN HURLEY

People crowded outside River Inn Friday night: "Hey look. I don't believe it, there's the Scatman eating dinner." The focus of the starstruck, 73-year-old performer and veteran TV and movie star, Scatman  Crothers—in town, hangin' out, havin' a bite to eat at the local diner before accepting The Jazz Note award from the Russian River Creative Arts Foundation at the River Theatre Centre next door.

Crothers, a Terre Haute, Indiana, native, best known as the Scatman, has been in film for over 60 years. 

Most of his fans know him as Louis from the TV series "Chico and the Man." He starred in "Roots"' and was the piano player Sam in the "Casablanca" TV series. Piano isn't one of the instruments Scatman is used to playing but he knows where the notes are. "I've been in the business long enough to know where my hands are supposed to be," he said grinning. Crothers sings and plays guitar.

Crothers was the first black to hit television, in 1948. Besides TV, Crothers starred in several dozen films as a character actor. Some of the films are The Shining, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The King of Marvin Gardens, all with Jack Nicholson; Steven Spielberg's Twilight Zone, and The Shootist. He also appeared in five movies with comedian Jerry Lewis.

Scatman doesn't keep track of it all. His manager Ron Graham does. Graham is currently working on a documentary on Scatman for cable TV. Graham reminisced, "He didn't even know who (Director Stanley) Kubrick was when he was asked to act in The Shining. He's more interested in playing music. Music is his life." And that contribution to music is why the Russian River Creative Arts Foundation chose to honor the illustrious performer.

When asked after the show how he felt about receiving awards, Scatman's modesty was apparent. "It's nice always to receive anything," he said. "Of course, it's better to give than to receive. I ain't no better than you and you ain't no better than me. We're all God's children and everybody's a star."

SIDEBARS

They were hot. And cool. Brubeck, Viva Brasil, Morgana King, Cornelius Bumpus and 3000 people a day grooved at the 1983 post-Labor Day Russian River Jazz Fest.

Temperatures soared over 100 degrees and the KJAZ All-Stars greeted Saturday's crowd followed by Brubeck, Bumpus, Napata Mero, Kitty Margolis Cole. Sonoma County Sheriffs estimate Sunday's crowd was larger than Saturday's and ticket sales confirm it.

Though the Guerneville Fire Department made a few first-aid calls for heat exhaustion, saxophonist Stan Getz was the first real casualty of the 1983 jazz fest. Getz, scheduled to highlight Sunday's lineup, collapsed last week after doing a show with Brubeck at the Hollywood Bowl. 

Getz is under medical care at a Whittier hospital. Sunday's schedule was altered, and Brubeck returned and again teamed with Richie Cole, filling the Getz spot. The duo's 12-minute version of Brubeck's immortal "Take Five" brought the crowd to its feet. One jazz fan from Berkeley, a lawyer, told ticket takers Sunday he was going to sue the CAF because Getz failed to show; ticket takers smiled and gave him a refund.

*.      *.     *

Jazz was once thought to make one promiscuous, drink alcohol and take or smoke dope. Liking jazz meant one had fallen into the dark hands of debauchery and despair. That's changed. When asked why they liked jazz, robust and healthy festival fans said, "because it's intellectual-visceral-it allows you to think, unlike rock and roll."

As jazz moved closer to Main Street, rock and roll became the musical power of darkness. And as inevitably happened jazz and rock began to influence each other (fusion jazz). Now quite conservative, jazz purists were outraged

Clarinetist of the Dave Brubeck Quartet, Bill Smith said, "Fusion jazz is not two separate things. It's two different aspects of the same thing. Rock & Roll and the blues are two different dialects of the same tongue. Music.

Dave Brubeck said, "Jazz is strong all over the world. The Russian River is like the Mississippi of California bringing us jazz."

Brubeck's jazz is often dubbed "mainstream" or middle of the road. In the '50s it was "modern" or "progressive"way off on the road's shoulder. Fusion has crept into the Brubeck group via the presence of Brubeck's sons.

Scatman Crothers, actor and singer, doesn't dig fusion. "Sorry, but I love the true sound. Chemical sounds don't do anything for me. Fusion jazz is mechanical—-that ain't music."

Jazz pianist Don Haas said the definition of fusion jazz came from the audien-ce. "To the average lay person, Count Bassie may seem vanguard. With fusion jazz, it depends upon who's talking and who's listening." To define it lies within the ear of the beholder.

Note bene: I spent a memorable evening with the incomparable Scatman Crothers at the Guerneville Diner next to the Rio Theater. After his concert, we all piled into a booth at the coffeeshop and gossiped the night away. I don't remember why he was in town (an award). Before that night I had never heard of him. He was a great storyteller. Man, the stories he told—we were riveted to the booth until way past closing—3 AM. What I remember is Scatman imitating Cab Calloway's famous song, with a Heidi heidi hei. I took notes, it appeared in The Paper with photos. The waitress closed up around us, but the Scatman was on a roll. And she had the good sense not to mess with that.

My friend and neighbor, Jonathan London had a groovy poem, Hep Cat, he was working on. (Was he with us that night in Guerneville?) Around the time Scatman blew outa town, Jonathan got a nibble from the big publishers who liked Hep Cat, and could he turn it into a children's book? Suddenly hep was in. And so was Jonathan riding high on a long coattail wind. Elucidate. Elucidate, indeed. hep-hep-hurray. He gave me signed copies. I wonder where those books are now?

RRWG Coffee & Co. reading, Marianne Ware, Maureen Hurley, Simone Wilson, Jonathan London, Zara Altair, Zelda Balchowski, Lee Perron,

Whale of a Gala, Poets & Humorists, Pat Nolan, Eula Long, Marianne Ware, Andrea Granahan, Maureen Hurley, Simone Wilson

drawing from Obligatory Hug

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

AMERICAN HIBAKUSHA

AMERICAN HIBAKUSHA
       —for Carolyn Forché 
         Hibakusha is the name the survivors of Hiroshima gave to themselves.

I.   The violin's slow scale
climbs above the beat
of the metronome,
patterning mountains of notes,
increasing in tempo.

II.   A child under the alders

stares at the liquid leaves
that hide small cones—
brown, like river debris.

III.    A sonic pitch
loosens the violin's strings.

The bow falls slack
and the hand falls silent.

IV.   A pulse of light quickens the sky
The leaves, robbed of their color
sizzle into premature fall. 
Ashes. Burnt decay.

V.  The acrid odor of hair
distracts the woman playing the violin.
Glancing at the mirror,
she watches fascinated,
as the mirror slumps off the wall.

VI.  Vast ridges of light.
No color anywhere—
only a drenched landscape
of saturated light
brushed by fingers of white noise.

 9/1/83 published in nuke notes, Sonoma, county, direct action, coalition, 2/1984, vol. 4, no.6
added 10/16 

2 POEM FRAGMENTS, Napa

The violin's small scale 

climbs above the metronome, 

small bejeweled clicks 

patterning mountains of notes,

increasing in tempo, 

a sonic pitch invades,

the strings lose their time,

the bow loosens 

and the hand falls silent.

9/1/1983

Napa? no date

Ducks slip into births and sleep 

in the shade of trees at noon. 

I feed them raspberries. 

Ducks masticating raspberries 

in a khaki colored lagoon. 

They swim over rotted bull rushes 

the way birds fly over 

invisible boundaries of fences. 

The word trespass is an unintelligible concept 

we see the line fall short of the mark. 

Either we plunge into the murky depths 

shedding drops of light from our breasts 

or we cower silently in the tall rushes 

and listen to the cackle and skirted rustle 

of ducks, afraid of the depths.

9/1/1983

Napa

First draft

the ducks slip out of the shade of trees, 

awaken from their nap by the approach, 

I feed them raspberries. 

They're masticating raspberries 

in the khaki colored lagoon.

They swim away over the bull rushes 

and I am reminded of the way birds 

fly over invisible boundaries of fences, 

barbed, electric, or wood

it doesn't matter.

The signs of no trespassing are not read.

To trespass is an unintelligible concept for birds.

I read the lines and fall short of the mark. 

Even if we climbed into the murky depths 

drops of light from our breasts, 

or we hope her silently in the tall tule rushes 

and listen to the started rustle and clacking 

of ducks afraid of the murky depths.

9/1/1983

Napa

added 10/16

Napa craft lecture, Galway Kinnell and Tess Gallagher, The music of poetry, journal

The rhythm allows a poem to breathe effortlessly, things that seemed impossible before you start writing, to be out of reach, become within reach. Writing is not the last ornamentation, but a part of the poem itself. The music of the poem is the poem. All of life is based on cycles, the becoming and the dying. The rhythm is the first expression of life. To attach to that rhythm, that’s what art does for us, it’s the music first, then the poetry. 

9/1/83 freewrite from a craft lecture with Tess Gallagher and Galway Kinnell

FREEWRITE

Death's feather-fringed angels

White like emily
more gold than gold

endless stream of raw wheat
in the eye of the poem

the same alarm clock stands
on countless night tables
back and forth
across the country
timing trysts. lecture readings
the same hands sweep
the same face unceasingly
like a sea lapping at the shore

9/1/1983? 84?

there's a reference to Mary Rudge in the first line, and Sappho in the third line. I have no idea what it means
added 5/2/2016

SLOW DANCE ON THE KILLING GROUND

SLOW DANCE ON THE KILLING GROUND

in the kingdom of the blind,
the one eyed man is a freak.

8/83?
Napa

RETURN FLIGHT

RETURN FLIGHT

My grandmother, they planted lilies

at the foot of your bed

before I understood the meaning of loss.

A chill in the air puts summer to rest.

White against the moon, an owl takes flight

across the valley & the echo of his cry

scatters light from the stars.

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

The small candles of barn owl feathers drift down

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

The slow breathing of soil before the frost

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

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

The earth spreads sonorous wings over you,

shakes rubies from her blood

& your long dark hair tumbles swift like a waterfall

until it turns white in the garden of your grandchildren.

& the night horses who pasture in your hair

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

At dawn the white rooster crows over sand dunes,

leaving an echo almost tasted on the tongue.

He crows, Gallo, gallo, gallo blanco.

The web that connects us moves slowly.

Wind in the cottonwoods marks a passage of time.

When my best friend was killed by a horse,

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

and in the fields in fall.”

The rooster cried, “My insides return to earth

so that my life may continue,”

before the axe swung.

My grandmother, now I know the earth receives us.

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

She kindles our slow bones so they too

will send roots down deep & drink from the stream.

She stands at the lintel with arms open wide,

waiting for us to return home

so she can close the door.

The return to earth is a quiet song

when water trickles down after the storm.

8/27/83

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

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


VUELO DE VUELTA/RETURN FLIGHT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1986-88 Falling to Sea Level

Isis Oasis Resort reading, Lee Perron, Maureen Hurley, Zara Altair, Kit Aldrich, Patty Truxaw, Mickey Sheehan

 

Poetry class on August 21 at Isis Oasis

The Isis Oasis Poetry Workshop convenes again on Sunday, Aug. 21 on the grounds of the Isis Oasis Lodge in Geyserville. The Isis workshop is an open gathering of Sonoma County language artists This month's agenda includes: "Unplanned Poetry," a community of words led by Mickey Sheehan and Patsy Truxaw: and readings by Russian River poets Lee Perron, Maureen Hurley,Zara Altaire and Truxaw. Actor, poet and musician Kit Aldrich will use the workshop to introduce and rehearse his latest work, a mixed media dada troubadour experiment. Sheehan and Terry Boucher plan to act out their favorite scene from Inherit the Wind. Tommy Thompson and Michael Welch may also attend the event. The Isis workshop is open to the public and both participants and observers are encouraged to attend. The group will be discussing the possibility of organizing a chamber music/poetry/fine wine afternoon during a Sunday in the fall. Anyone interested in reading or participating on Isis Poetry Sundays may either show up or call Truxaw at 433-1907 or Sheehan at 433-5835 for more information.

Fragment MARGUERITES

Marguerites growing
amid the marble soils of Crete.
Amid the large columns of bones.
Marguerites strewn across the soil of Crete
blooming between marble columns
and the bones of the temples.
Marguerites holding the clouds up
and keeping the sky at bay.

8/13/1983
added 10/16
revised

Two marginalia drawings, RAS meeting, Lakeport

SATURN’S PRODIGAL RETURN

1. Saturn’s prodigal return straight from the heart,
the light well dips silver ink from the moon,
a nightly repetition of black time,
countless nights of washing
The seahorse cracked like a Crab Nebula.
Best eaten cold on ice.
Light, the silent snowfall of stars
whose silver lining is in question.

2. I saw the mountains on the edge of the moon
casting 10,000-foot shadows
into an empty Sea of Tranquility.
Space maps, interstellar dust, meteor showers
on the backside of the moon.
Perseus complained in a binary language.
What of the spacial folds in the Milky Way?
Who is blessing the Southern Cross,
was there really something to the back
side of the moon?

3. What is the color of blood in the dark?
Women’s blood is thicker than men’s.
Each month we try to hold onto it.
What oracles will the trees listen to
after all the leaves fall?
My tears become like leaves
and flow away and whole forests
have been decimated.
The earth is still bleeding
and we are always thirsty.

No date, 1983, probably the Perseid showers, So, August 12.

FIRST TIME

FIRST TIME
              —for Jim Byrd

Our canoe rounded a sheltered river bend—
collecting calm emerald water
'til it glistened in a slow, curved smile.
The towering trees punctuated its mirrored speech.

From our raised paddles words escaped—
unannounced as water droplets
spawning concentric ripples
in an undulating desire towards shore.

Who is naming these silent tremblings,
sneaking up, canoe-like along the river,
where,  coming down for their evening drink,
our hearts stopped,  afraid to slake their thirst?

Who will stand guard over them
so they can safely come down to the shore
and ask the river where the trees stop
and the reflection begins?
Through the trees the wind is trickling.
Only the shore answers in a slow, curved smile.

8/4/1983
added 10/16

VIRGO

VIRGO

In the moonlight,
naked,
I will cook fish

8/1983

CORNWALL

CORNWALL

The sea shakes the cliffs,
loosening rocks like teeth.
The pitched roofs of the manor
toss the air back to clouds
as the sea shoves against the moor.

Beyond the window
is the lone figure of a man
wending his way towards shore.

A girl in a blue shift
leans against another window
gazing at the sea
marking his progress.

The curtains luff like sails.
Facing the afternoon sea,
her eyes, mirrors
reflecting back the purchase of the sea. 

8/1983

TOBACCO

TOBACCO

From the campfire, flames leap and dance
as if the devil's fiddle were made of smoke.
A cigarette dangles from the gypsy's mouth.

The earth pushes up a cornerstone
in a slow rotation of silence.
The thin red wailing of a siren
heralds the dusk in another part of town.

She stops to light her cigarette.
The horses lean toward her,
hungry for tobacco.  

8/83