CREAMERY CREEK

CREAMERY CREEK
   —for Albert Straus

Teddy Roosevelt fished here.

That is why this part of the creek, where it enters Tomales Bay

is called White House Bend. The flash and churn 

of silver salmon spawned in cowshitted green water—

a coinage of fiery fish, unturned stones and politics.

With a pitchfork, my uncle speared a salmon

fat with roe—escaped embers combusting downstream

where the given name changes again and again

but not the creek. Creamery, Lagunitas, Papermill.

The Miwok names are lost.

With rosemary from my grandmother's garden, we seasoned the salmon.

Nestled in the resin-green needles, a surprise of pale blooms 

like fragments of the sky against sunrisen flesh 

wrapped in a tinfoil night. We baked it in butter and garlic

but the flesh was like muddied water.

The cats fought over the feathered bones.

Each pool was named: Shafter's, China House, The Gravel Pit, Taylor. 

Beneath dank redwoods, rags from the City were pulped into paper

by big paddles when Papermill Creek was still untamed.

Near the Inkwells, so deep, everyone said they were bottomless,

we found obsidian and chert arrowheads, nameless iron, 

coins and wedding rings. Who we were. Where we came from.

In summer, my chestnut mare plunged through pools,

her hair, floating in verdent water like fire.

I slipped off her back, grabbed hold of her tail

and was towed to the opposite shore

not understanding the sense of loss.

Years later, my uncle said, I feel guilty

taking that salmon before she laid her eggs.

My uncle said, Before Kent dam was built

the Cataracts were alive with falls.

When the wind blew, dense stands 

of pine and redwood roared like fire.

Now, silt feeds the azaleas, stream orchids

and huckleberries. No coinage of fish.

The forests, the dairies—nearly all gone now.

Perhaps, forseeing the end of civilization,

this is why the Romans named the rosemary for remembrance.

Creamery/Lagunitas/Papermill Creek fed by all the tributaries:

Arroyo, and Barranca—where, in the small summer pools

I caught trapped fish bare-handed; a bagpipe skirling

Amazing Grace from some forgotten canyon at sunset.

Devil's Gulch, Crystal Springs. All the names—even Kit Carson left his mark.

At the headwaters of Creamery Creek—named after Jóse Revere's milking barn

where Alexander Graham Bell set up the first telephone system

in the San Geronimo Valley—did they shout through copper wires

at midnight, The Indians are coming! The Indians are coming!

to those recording the historic event in the kitchen of the main house?

We are already here on the last wild ride of the long night.

And what of the Miwok names?

6/4/88    Marshall/Pt. Reyes

1991 San Geronimo Valley Resource Guide

1989 First Leaves

Poetry reading at Markey’s Cafe with Sharon Doubiago, Andy Clausen, Maureen Hurley

RRWG, CPITS student reading, Burbank Activity Center

Markey’s Cafe reading Maureen Hurley & Sharon Doubiago

 

Journal entry, Forestville fossils

Now that I've begun editing my student homes for the final book, only now am I beginning to feel the urge to write. It's been a long slow drought. Teaching takes away from my writing energy, like any other job.

In Berkeley we diligently conserve water, but here, on the river, we take it out and put it back in again. Even during drought, you can't ask the river to conserve water.

The orchards here are so impoverished and sterile, not the variety of plant life we come to expect from nature. Even in the creek, there's little to look for.

Was this a shallow inland sea that stretched to the Farallones? Why are there no clams here? When the embankment on River Road, they tumbled from their beds to the road cut like an Indian midden.

Beneath the fossil beds, it's hollowed out. I crawled inside and under 10,000 years' worth of history. It made me realize that every place we walk has an equal pedigree of age. 

The clams gave us something to anchor our own limited perceptions of time upon.

I find tooted clams—what species? And an olivine snail shell, 10,000 years old, clearly recognizable with today's species.

Did the farmer who first cleared and plowed these fields ever wonder about the clamshells planted here?

Susie the cat has plans for that bluejay. I can tell by her silence.

The next time I want to walk along the beach, I can do it right here in the orchard. shells and all.

I think of my grandmother daily, the pain eases somewhat. Still in dreams, she claims it's all been a mistake. She's not dead. What am I supposed to do with that?

W

Hunce Voelcker, just back from India, says Link, his old lover, long since dead, also visits him regularly, claiming it's a mistake, and leads him into trouble.

Hunce says Shasta, Benares, and the Brooklyn Bridge are his three favorite holy places on earth.

I contemplate mailing Huncie the last of my Brooklyn Bridge stamps on Hart Crane's birthday. I will be sad to miss the party, perhaps by then, we will be in Peru.

There's so much turning and turmoil in my soul. The air is filled with anticipation, something is about to happen. But what?

Susie attains the posture of the stoic, the bluejay continues to call  aii, aii, aii.

Blue and salmon clouds huddle, quail in the undergrowth, bedding down for the night.

Twice now I've sat up in the middle of the night, still sound asleep, and I talk to a presence who is dwelling in John's back house where we sleep. I don't know who it is. My grannie?

The first night, I said, I love you. The second night I said, I am profoundly unhappy, and though I don't have any intention of committing suicide, I'm beginning to understand what drives people to it.

The sound of my own voice woke me enough to remember what I said in the morning. It left me spooked. This time John never heard me. Perhaps it's the beginning of healing, perhaps now, it will lift somewhat. Or I've gone and disturbed some other ghosts.

The clouds grow more dramatic with each minute. I can't get any elevation from the top of the orchard to see the sunset on the horizon. So cold for May, my fur coat is like a bear hide.

The blue spears of wheat I gather from the sewer barrow, taste like any other unknown grass seed. Sour, milky, and mildly sweet. 

We are all fossils, uncovering fossils. And more fossils.

5/6/1988

added 9/2016

FORESTVILLE

FORESTVILLE

Beneath the grass
of this meadow's thousand deaths,
lies an ancient shore waiting 10,000 years
for the returning tide.

The alluvial tide of clay and iron,
wild riot of rye on the new leach fields,
budding poppies and lupine
beneath, thunder clouds at sunset,
the chirrup of flickers and jays
and early crickets—all off tempo.
Early May snowstorms.

5/6/1988

REVISED

The leach field,
a barrow for sewage,
grows wild riots of rye
and poppies beneath
thunder clouds at sunset
in early May.

The scissoring bluejays
patrol the air with diligence
and energy.

5/8/1988

Home Ranch mentioned in Lander County line, Folklife in central Nevada, 1988

In the spring of 1985 we made a pilgrimage to the Walsh Home Ranch, where my grandmother first lived when she came to America. Her half-uncle, Paddy Walsh offered safe refuge for most of our family, who passed through the ranch at one point or another. Paddy became the single largest landowner in Lander County. When we first visited, I was surprised to discover the current Home Ranch owner, Jim Champie was cousins with folks I grew up with in Marin County. Mo Champie and Phil Bundschu were classmates of mine at Drake High School. He knew the names of our horses. Through him we also discovered another branch of the family we thought long lost. Apparently we were the only ones making pilgrimages to the ranch. I found this book far from home, while visiting a folklorist in the Sierra foothills.

• 
  
• Walsh Home Ranch early photos 1920
• Home Ranch, Reese River Valley
• Walsh Tombs: Photos
• HOME RANCH, 1985
• ELEGY FOR MARY WALSH
• WALSH folklore
• AVS notes: Nancy Walsh Estomba

Senator John Garamendi, CPITS Thank You letter, Sacramento Arts Day, 1988

CPITS writing workshop with Jorge Lujan 4/12/88

 CPITS writing workshop with Jorge Lujan 4/12/88

I am in my mother’s arms, the long sun in my eyes. I am mesmerized by her red lips and the jungle print of her flared skirt that later became a pillow for my grandmother’s couch. My jowls quiver with baby fat, my milk eye squinting in the sun, it’s Easter, I drool on my mother’s arms in the unbearably hot sun. By the same white car with its dusty blue top, where moments earlier my grandparents stood sternly gazing at the camera, all bright colors in my mind, all this fuss, my hand clutching red and green ribbons under my chin and I’m scratching scratching. I chew down on her arm and a rocking motion jiggles all the colors into a swirl. At the age of two, gazing out of this photograph, I see a woman older than my mother in a red dress, and an embroidered tapestry with mirrors. She is writing in a book and all those controlled marks that grown-ups call writing, I sweep my arms across the paper and tables making all this writing of lessons into vortexes. This woman has no children. Her grandmother is dead. She is much sadder than I can imagine. I have no words for this kind of sorrow that slips from her eyes in all the colors of the world like a river . She is in a classroom filled with children writing, a tall man sings poems about when he was five. There is not much difference between us, we are the same under the skin. She has collected many facts in her 35 years while I am a clean slate about to begin. 

• PHOTO ALBUM

CPITS Teaching journal, Jorge Lujan workshop suitcase words, photograph at 10

Jorge Luhan, who was our guest artist from Mexico, called this renaming lesson beautiful names. 

For example fox: the phoenix of the woods.

Moon: lost pearl from Saturn’s rings

Sun: high yellow spark that travels.

River: fleeting bluebird

My favorite was the student sample dragons: stoves on the run.

We made lists on the board and we combined the ideas.

It rained and all the names were lost. Ask the wind, you want me to do your work. Ask the fox but he danced. Ask the moon but it was cloudy. Ask the sun it was also cloudy. Ask the wind when you were so beautiful a hovering blue river of the sky redwoods, the sky on fire. wash your feet in the sea smooth lavender rocks, so warm, smooth rock in the hand of the earth in gods hands. Dusk: a forest on fire waiting for a visit from the moon. The wind took the names to the next village and the first poetic words were spoken, they were born. This is how poetry was born.

Jorge takes all the ideas and then tells us a story, a little boy and girl return return home to tell their mother: we have been moving the smooth blue river of the sky, where the trees were rockets to the sky, where the smooth lavender rocks were in gods hands and a forest was on fire waiting to visit the moon.

My definitions:  Marsh: sky catcher of sunset where wild geese squabble and sing in their floating nests. Candle: with its burning eye piercing the night of false dawn. Jasper: a bleeding stone of crushed embers from the first fires. Breeze: a fire roaring in the pines with no flame at all.

Metaphor is discovering the mysteries of the New World around us. Write a poem containing the four sentences from your definitions ask yourself what kind of water, involve the elements, give lots of details.

Senator Jim Nielson CPITS Thank You letter, Sacramento Arts Day, 1988

VENUS UNEARTHED

It was an unusually dry year in 1820 when the
farmer's plow hit a stone in the fallow field of Melos.
Thinking it was a building block to salvage,
Theodore Kentortaus wrested from the earth
the object of perfect love.

When he pulled the goddess Aphrodite (or Venus)
from the shallow grave, he fell in love,
spent an unmeasured amount of time in his shed
gazing upon her beauty, 'til his wife, jealous,
sold her to the French. Was it the maddening April winds
or the vestiges of an older story
that fanned her rage?

When Venus was hoisted onto the French frigate
she saw the sea was curved like a bell,
she escaped into the water. Her white arms
were lost when the sailors tried to raise her
from Posideon's watery depths.
Some say it was because she didn't want to leave Greece.
A fisherman fell in love with her,
gathered up her pitiful broken arms,
rowed far out into the Aegean and tossed them overboard
so she would always embrace the boats of the fishermen.

Men searched the sea in vain for her arms,
unable to find the watery X the fisherman marked.
Now, only fish gaze upon the beauty of her white arms:
one hand holding the hard-won golden apple of discord 
the other gathering up her robes as she received
the judgement of Paris. Hera's final revenge—
a skirmish broke out between the French and Germans.
A stray shot chipping a piece from the face of Venus,

mutilating the immortal beauty that Paris claimed.

4/1/1988
rev. 3/89

Notes on my poem, Venus Unearthed, or what John calls poet’s work

Since I am working back in time I write backwards in my notebook. Perverse, I know but I wound up gathering much more information than I had pages left in one section of my journal—which later caused confusion when I tried to revisit it later. I thought the Venus notes would take a couple of pages, and then I could save the rest for poetry. Alas I filled the entire section with notes. What started out as a simple OED hunt became a day-long adventure. In other words, instead of writing a poem, I lost an entire day in a dictionary. I didn’t know I’d find so much information, I found the entire Greek pantheon. And one thing led to another. I followed every lead. After spending six hours looking up this information, who begat who and who murdered who, how they’re all related to each other, that they all had ulterior motives to do each other in. I guess the best revenge in this case, is not just living well, but outliving your enemies and their progeny, and so on. adds a whole new meaning to the term, the sins of the father, or mother.

All this legwork and I don’t have the energy to finish the poem. But, as John said, it’s all poets work. Like the time I spent the day memorizing the poem Innisfree by Yeats because I was missing my grandmother.

RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY outake

RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY OUTAKES

1. If word processing is possible
with only a limited memory,
how many rams does it take to equal one rom?
If I work in total darkness
will my eyes reflect the phosphor tubes
or will I pass for a feral night animal
hunting under the cover of darkness
for prehistoric prey in a literate world?

Is there total enlightenment at the end of the screen
or is the dark worse than the byte?
Ram Ram Ram Ram


2. The ultimate dada experience:
to write the manuscript of a lifetime
on a floppy disk, not make a hard copy,
and then run a magnet across it.
The ferrous molecules will line up
and attain perfect enlightenment.
Ram Dass Baba Ram Hass
Bob Doss Ram Baba peach flambé.

4/88? 89?

when was this first written? was filed in 1980, I think that's a typo
from newspaper clippings
WOOFITIBOOTAH

Oh dear, this is rather striking too close to home.

RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY is MIA (hard copy)
(See Hidden Logic)

I found a hard copy of RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY, two versions, actually... no date, but v.1. is dot matrix, so 87 is probably correct.

CPITS Journal, Alderpoint, 3/30/88

Alderpoint, 3/30/88

John and I teach poetry workshops at the Hoagland-Zenia school, not quite a one-room school house, but close. We teach poetry to three different groups of kids. The soccer ball becomes a metaphor of the moon. We toss it around the room. We play catch with the sun and moon.

At lunch we talk of incest and child abuse, the eighth grader I took photos of earlier, couldn’t take it anymore and shot her mother after graduation, that fine hair trigger. The toy uzis at Geoff’s door brings it all back home, a life I could’ve had, living on these rough mountains in the middle of nowhere where the smallest denomination of barter is a $50 bill. We accept an ounce of buds and leaves for services rendered from Geoff and consider it payment for working three hours, about $200. Not bad.

Geoff points out, you see the lights, that farthest ridge is Zenia. What I learned from the Davis household was to fill a haunted house with music and with laughter. Putting on words, you feel them deep inside. The magic all over my body tells me the  memory of hands going up and down, is never far off, and I can’t find my way. The what if‘s don’t come as strong, but the same basic attraction pulls us into a vortex with ex- and current lovers and unalterable destinies. Geoff’s arms are massive logs. Not the slender boy I once knew growing up.

There are no streets in Zenia, there is no town. The only phone for miles looks out over the ridges and the postmistress reads the mail in the farmhouse perched on the cliff that serves as a general store, post office, message center for the folks miles around. It is either that or drive miles of winding gravel road to Kettenpom or Alderpoint. 

Zenia, Xenolith, strange rocks. Does Zenia mean a place of strangers or a place where strangers lived or are all of us strangers here or is the strangness related to the fact no one is here and we’re all alone. The wind reads my book on rocks and minerals in no time at all. There are rare rocks here that grow nowhere else in the world, the gift debt of the San Andreas Fault, sheet silicates. In my rock book there’s a special section on sheet silicates, the rare rocks of the north coast. Rare minerals in blueschist and serpentine. For the first time in my life I am reading everything I can lay my hands on that has to do with geology of the north coast. 

At Hayfork, there is a suspension bridge, fences divide the valley and at Irene‘s café, once the old high school we eat boysenberry tarts. Hayfork is miles from Zenia and we are more than a half a day’s journey apart in both times, and worlds.

• ZENIA as prose poem (corrupt text) 1984
• HORSES RUNNING THROUGH THE STREETS OF ZENIA AT NIGHT

Northbay Poetry Series at Copperfield’s with John Oliver Simon, Jorge Lujan, Maureen Hurley

The Abraham Lincoln brigade

Ed Balchowski, the one-armed piano player read his poems with his daughter Zelda, at Garbo‘s. He tells us he was in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War, fighting fascism. He said an army of civilians, a politically conscious People’s Army traveled to to the Spanish Republic. The communist party workers in Spain needed to fight fascism, and International troops sneaked into Spain. He tells us of a nurse named Selma O’Reilly, women ambulance drivers and everyone made up stories of why they were going to Spain. Some posed as archaeologists, others as doctors, nurses. It was a five-hour hike over the Pyrenees. There was a US embargo, Roosevelt refused to support democratic Spain  and sided with Franco. He saw the republic as a communist threat. Even the Catholic Church supported Franco while the Germans bombed civilian towns, Madrid Guernica Bilbao. It was not very glamorous, not like in the movies. The lies. Mañana that all familiar cry. We ran out of munitions and medical supplies.  He sings Spanish Civil War songs. Ed says no pasarán, with the stump of his left arm orchestrating the air. They subsisted on mule meat and garbanzos. The government went with the embargo to Spain and people in America protested it, there was tons of food and clothing waiting. We put pressure on Washington to deliver the goods. In 1938 the US embargo lifted, we were there with no arms, pre-World War I weapons, Napoleonic? He mentions his comrades in arms—Hemingway writing For Whom the Bell Tolls, he mentions Langston Hughes, he mentions Lilian Hellman and Paul Robeson—all who spent time at the front. He said the USSR was the only country to send arms to Spain. We were truly an international brigade, Americans, the English, the French, the Italians, the Poles,  the Russians, all part of the international brigade. He raised his right arm in a salute. Fascist troops drove the brigade to the sea. Hitler invaded Austria and 70% of the Lincoln brigade was dead or lost. For every action there is a reaction 3200 Americans died, half the victims return to the United States and continued to fight the war in the US. So much sorrow, we were defeated but we won the war against fascism, D-Day 1945. When we returned home, we were harassed by the US Army and McCarthyism was a witchhunt. I didn’t look ahead, I was doing what I wanted to do. I didn’t think of getting killed. I don’t regret the loss of an arm. It seemed like the right thing to do. Aye Manuela The Abraham Lincoln brigade.

Steve Torre Workshop, Mark West School Poem fragments

BOLINAS RIDGE

I remember finding charge stumps
still glowing with red eyes.

I had no way of knowing
if they had been smoldering
from a recent burning,
or if they had kept a fiery vigil
all those years
long after the loggers were gone.

3/17/1988

in the morning sun
we watched the old guys
split the cedar shakes

Thwock!

Turn the stump

Thwock!

Turn it again turn

To keep the grain even, he said

The sweat drizzled his whiskered cheeks,

And I sank deeper into the lake.

Like loggers we rolled the logs
below Shafter Dam in the greening pond.

Have you ever noticed the fields by the coasts
punctuated with charred stumps?

Machines with spiked teeth
stripped the bark from trees
as if they were made of eggshell,
instead of wood.

I abandoned my own farm
and a friend runs cattle there now.

The horses they chewed on the barn
until it fell back into the earth.
Unseasonable sawdust
and the mare, Binty choking on that splinter.
Poetic karma.

long shadows of barns

straddle the thin peninsula 

from Tomales Bay to the Pacific 

On Tomales Head 

walking along the windswept land 

the lonely whitewashed barns 

cattle and rocks grazing 

on the windswept grass 

We are losing a landscape of culture

look to your place in the landscape 

your childhood 

I never found the wilderness 

though I spent five years looking for it 

until I realized I was looking for my lost childhood.

What I've lost is like a Kodak snapshot 

with its off blues and deep reds of the 50s 

my mother's carmine lipstick, 

the floral skirt that later became pillows for the couch

People living solitary lives 

personal history 

skin changing imagine

Along the windswept land
solitary whitewashed barns
rocks and cattle grazing
on the matted grass.

Long shadows of barns
straddled the thin peninsula
from Tomales Bay to the Pacific.

Families nailed row after row
of abalone shells to the sides of barns,
not realizing they were finite.
My aunt remembers how the car,
lost in the fog, was also nearly lost
to the sea on Tomales Point.

The horses would chew the sides of the barn
until its back broke and fell back into the earth,
broken spine and unseasonable sawdust
the final splinters lodged in the gray mare's throat
fell her as well.

Schools of tule elk
the extraordinary curve of horn
ancestors
a coyote pelt nose down on the wall

Our shadows watered the sawdust
our eyes all bloodshot
our hearts like a blast of wheat
through the clear ribs of morning
light sank through my body
like alder and pine
and sheep biting the red clay
as the huge cable snapped
gutting the darkness
 and I saw the sun standing
in a pool of ravens

there is no bridge in Hayfork
the big bowl of the Valley
is surrounded by mountains.

3/18/1988

Stephen Torre workshop 

Matanzas field trip, poem notes

 
Matanzas field trip fragments

Bradley brings wax from the mission to the house of Vallejo.

Spring arrives, sporadic cold growling in the shadows.

Luis tells Nicholas, if you kiss a frog that’ll give somebody words.

A small newt slithering to sneakehood in the slow evolutionary crawl.

Small boys squeal and tease scorpions from under small rocks.

Lupine turns field blue in anticipation of evening.

Children gather locust pods, feel they have gained a fortune.

Mikey tells me of the speckled trout he knows in a pool below Spring Lake.

One kid, zippered up backwards in his coat, patiently waits for all this to end.

In the barn, wicker willow cages, rawhide strips, harnesses.

Blue Willow plates, a massive bowl carved out of a single tree. 

Stone mills, tule elk skulls, graceful curved horns.

A coyote pelt on the wall, facing nose down.

3/14/88

Dan Hauser letter on offshore oil, arts day & my poems

KEEPING DREAMTIME ALIVE

KEEPING DREAMTIME ALIVE

In the Caribbean, fish once took rainbow directions 

from the sky to cloak themselves in magic 

and they wore the first colors to inhabit the earth.

In the Arctic and the Antarctic realms
blue invented itself because ice,

once part of the sky, was lonely for itself. 

At Ayers Rock the red of ancient stones
was dusted with chalk handprints 

to keep Dreamtime alive another 40,000 years. 

When the last artist died, eons slipped into dreamlessness. 

The shaman's grandson leaves a handprint, 

but he doesn't know the sacred rites or the stories.

A part of poetry has died.

The last keeper of the old ways to die 

is the man who knows the burial rights.
He cries himself to sleep knowing, 

because there is no one else left

who knows the proper way of burial, 

he will not join his ancestors.
No one will place his spinal bones in the cave 

so he too may enter into Dreamtime.

In Guatemala, the jungle dresses itself in green 

like parrots budding on branches. 

Soldiers absentmindedly click their machine guns,

the color of commerce and domination.

2/1988

slightly edited

added 9/15/2016

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

What's in a name?

Baba – my baby name, baby in Irish.
Grandmother in Russian. Babushka.
My grandmother's scarf. Baa baa black sheep.
Ali Baba. Enlightened thief. Either I named myself,
Or my grandparents named me teacher, Baba, holy man, sadhu.

I was called Baba to distinguish me
from my mother, also a Maureen. She hated her name –
but she hated her middle name even more. Helen.
She had a face that moved men to madness.
So she called herself Kelly, after working for the Kelley Girls.
She married a man named Tom Green, then she was Kelly Green.
An Irish colleen. Why Maureen? My grandmother's dead,
I can't ask her why, Maybe Maureen O"Sullivan.
Maureen meant I was in trouble. 

Baba was good baby, loved baby.

Little Mary – little bitter one –from Miriam – 

the rebellious dancer who took a timbril in her hand 

and all the women followed her with timbrils in their hands. 

Seek ye unto the Lord. The horse and rider were thrown into the sea. 

Maura, the little dark one. Or even Marinita, little one, she of the sea.

My school nickname was Mo

after the Beatles, Steph calling me Mo. 

Oh, you plant the pain in my heart
with your wistful eyes,
girl of my choice, Maureen
will you drive me mad for the kisses
your shy sweet mouth denies, Maureen.

That wasn't me.

Viola – violets, the sweet scent edible purple.
My unknown father's mother's name. Shy retiring flower –

and Johanna—God has been gracious, gracious gift of God,

 or victorious one in Sanskrit.

Hurley – a child of the sea and tides.
A bishop boiled in oil who would not denounce God for Ireland.

Someone once said to name your child 

with an astrological balance of elements.
Water controls wood and destroys mental.
To balance earth, fire, air, water, metal and wood
allows the universal order to run smoothly through one's life.

But I am fire surrounded by fire, born on the watered cusp of Scorpio. 

I am surrounded by lions, Gemini rising, the twins, the Piscean moon.
I flair, burning bright, then, retreat to the sea.
I am fire. I am most sustained and soothed by water.
Sagittarius, the archer, the centaur, half-man – half beast. 

And I dream in the coinage of horses galloping to the sea.

2/23/1988

added 9/15/2016

an expanded version
WHO BUT I

Obligatory Leap, Feb. 1988, , Russian River Writers' Guild

Journal: Sonoma Mountain

I couldn't help but notice the beauty of late afternoon in early spring when enough winter light keeps a certain suspense in the air, shadows not quite juxtaposed in equal measurements.

But the yellow light of mustard in shadow, is moving into green, until you can no longer detect the difference of new grass in sunlight, or mustard in shadow. Both take on that greeny light that transparent depths of summer pools. 

Maps of the seasons on the grass, the edges of the mountain. St. Helena's shoulders. How much better I understand the earth when I hike in the hills. 

Sonoma Mountain. I carry a bruise the size of a football on my side when we panicked,diving for cover as a truck cruised by too slow on the fireroad—we're trespassers.

I have trouble with the notion of those, unworthy of the land, having financial ownership of it, imposing also spiritual ownership of the land. We are stewards here, all of us.

John's foot uncovers a flake of obsidian, a gift from the first stewards of this land.

imagine this place with no fences, no houses.

Piecing together the tiny yards into a quilt, I get a glimpse of what it must've been like here, but I want to see large tracts of unsliced, undigested land. 

I bring back pumice from the summit of Sonoma Mountain near the top of the ridge, there is a natural megalith, like a large tooth. I wrap my body around it clockwise, then counter clockwise—cycle of the seasons. 

So many dead to appease. Dave, my grandmother, Ron, the drowned man of Puerto Escondido. All those dead in the jungles and dirt roads of Central America. 

I have nine months more of grieving for my grandmother and within that time, I'll continue to move rocks from summit to summit because it's the only thing that seems worthwhile doing. I said a prayer for the dead, and the undead. And the wounded I think. 

The last aborigine who knew the burial rights, had no one to bury him, no one to pass the tribal information onto, and the last artist cannot share the significance of the stories to the uninitiated. So with his death, 40,000 years of uninterrupted poetry was put to rest. I want to tell him it isn't all lost, this voiceless approach to the universe, can you hear and understand it isn't gone forever?

Yes, 40,000 years of dreamtime lost. Look what we white folks have done to this place in 150 years. 40,000 years from now, will anything but plastic survive us?

And Homo sapiens, a mere drop in the bucket of time. We are the AIDS virus of the earth. Not much to be thankful for. The ozone it disappears, how much did I kill with today's cup of coffee, shared with Fred?

Journal notes Napa, Dave Evans' death

Driving back from the hospital, I couldn't help but think of Dave Evans, realizing he's dead and no longer living on Evan Street. Kristine and the new baby. Was it the arrival of the baby who killed Dave in the end? Born into this world with a heart problems, and the irony of Dave dying within months of his birth from a heart attack. Circular file. Kris is keeping mum about the inevitable questions that arise. Did I put in my foot in my mouth telling Dave's daughter, Lee, that her father had had a vasectomy? I thought everyone knew. And Kris saying: God had different plans for us. He sure did. More than we bargained for. But that's the way it is with the capricious gods. Be careful of what you wish for. And now she's a widow. My heart aches for her. And for the baby. And for Lee who has no one to help her shoulder this burden of grief.

Napa Journal notes for a poem never written, ROADMAPS

The morning brings a bright false spring. I swerve, angrily yell at the older man and two women stuffed into the cab of a late model dodge, my truck is held captive as they dawdle down the road. They turn off at the cemetery and I am kin to their sorrow and the joy of the day. The essence of early spring, promises of new renewal and with this little brush with death, I am reminded of my own grandmother, my uncles at Holy Cross Cemetery, an acropolis so large, one needs to consult a road map to find kin. Lee Evans says she still wants to pick up the phone to call her father and I must admit I have the same urges. I confess MaBell could make a fortune. The energy to write a poem is so fragile that you begin by blowing on embers to start a flame, but if you fan too hard or in the wrong place there is no fire, no flame, just the urge to create something that never materialized, leaving a vacuous feeling in the brain. The mountains’ hard silhouette, a knife the throat of the sky, blooming mustard so yellow the sun drowns in the Valley of the Moon.

2/18/1988

Letter to my Napa State Hospital Poetry Students, 2 /18/1988

Letter to my Napa State Hospital Poetry Students

Castles in the Sky Poetry Reading and Book Signing

This is for Liebel, the one-legged, who remembered the poetry of Nazim Hikmet, who thought the T-12 group poem was good. Liebel who also thought our duet poem was also very good, Liebel who wanted to send copies of the poems out to all his friends. Did I have some stamps? Would I mail them for him?

This is for wall-eyed Cecil who came down to earth long enough to read his poem to the group.

This is for Mike who, after 14 years, finally has a new pair of glasses—trifocals—who said he didn't know if he still knew how to read, who like to read his poems out loud to everyone he met.

Ned who's still writing, said that got some love poems published and he proudly told me that they even took some of his earlier work too. No matter that it's a vanity press, costing him $40 a copy for the book. Why should I destroy his pleasure? Would I buy a copy, he asks. Ned, who set his poems to music, all of them, is reading his own poems and other inmates' works.

I learn that Liebel said some books of his poems are coming out – from the words of Bonnie and Brooke, the only two that showed up from his group. I wish more people had come. We signed poetry books and we wish each other well. The patients are wanting to work with me again. We faced the tenuousness of goodbye.

Bonnie tells me that Marcus is out of Napa and living in San Francisco. I have a moment of uneasiness, hoping men who murder their mothers keep it in the family, so to speak. But he is a good writer. I wish him well.

So many on the inside, so many on the outside. Who will survive in either place?

Patricia felt the patients really enjoyed the workshops. She begins to play her broken record complaint about the staff. I gently derail her by saying, we can't make the staff over. But with promises of future work, we part. We both know it won't happen.

I confess to the patients how I was terrified to come here and work with them. I came away pleased with what I had learned about madness, myself, and my own work. I came away with far more that I gave. Everybody so open and vulnerable. Such is the soul of poetry.

It was interesting to be able to compare the adult Napa State Hospital patients' experiences with the high school boys this morning. They have no idea how much freedom they have. Or how good they have it. 

The teacher keeps repeating how they have low skills (say it enough and they will believe you). But none of them are anywhere near as disabled as the Napa State Hospital crew. Poets who rose to the challenge and opened their hearts to poetry.

I marvel at how much closer to poetry the Napa State Hospital inmates are than these out-of-control teenagers—some of whom will eventually wind up here too. Their spirits having failed, their veins filled with drugs, their bodies will become a shell, not a home. 

This much I can't tell them. They will need to work it out for themselves. I wish them well. And am on my way down the long road home for the last time...long shadows in the canyons.

2 /18/1988 (I think)

CHARM FOR ATTRACTING WILD BIRDS

Charm for attracting wild birds: 

place the wings of dead birds 

carefully on your front doorstep 

and wait for the birds to flock to your door.

2/17/88

Woven Valentine for Sonoma State Art form the Heart Art Auction

After traveling in Guattemala, I made several woven paper valentines for Sonoma State Art from the Heart Art Auction. Not sure of the date.  Watercolor on morilla board, collage, 8x10" I wrote a poem round the edge, but I can't read it. This is a photocopy, so I guess it sold.

Not sure of the date on this one possibly 1987, or 88.

I was making these, and it's probably where I got the idea.

Cupids and Lonely Hearts, Love poems, The Paper, Feb 11, 1988

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

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

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

BY MAUREEN HURLEY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

60s style, 80s organization

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

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

"What's sub-lethal?"

Laguna front page photo 2/88

Journal Entry, CPITS, Mendocino Oil Spill

2/9/1988 noon on Tuesday.

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

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

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

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

Celia said: Consider all writing your work.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TURNING STONES (after Layer of Marine Haze)

TURNING STONES

I am a mover of small rocks.

From Monte Alban I bring small pottery sherds

to Mount St Helena. I leave volcanic rocks

for my dead grandmother and take quartz crystals

from the mountain.

On the ridge facing the ocean

I've made a triangle of stone cairns.

Four vultures wheeling, circling as their want—

shiny black feathers in the deep forest

and blueschist

converging over my altar of stones—

I left them corn and bread,

water and sage smoke.

We invent ritual.

The elequence of necessity crystalizes all thought

into the single vortex of the sea

churning and rising like a cover

over sleeping bodies.

The sea answers, she is our mother.

These shells, these rocks are our gifts.

The passage of a soul is marked

in the muted silver of bracelets,

dentalium and jaspar.

In the firepit, rounded cobbles—

What quarry gave them birth?

I've begun to speak of things

I never knew I knew.

We are learning new languages to keep us on shore

and I am a camera facing the iris of my eye—

the diaphragm, open and close, open and close

like the contracting and expanding universe.

I dream of machine guns in the jungle

and of falling over backwards.

I dream of sickness

and of rolling with desire on the grass with wolves—

After all, we are pack animals.

On the day Robert Duncan died

I dreamed of the green meadows I am called to

again and again.

2/5/88

On the Day Robert Duncan Died

Point Bonita:

The scratchy sound of pen and white page, the drip drip of noses, and the scratchiness of the throat. Brokenhearted Sharon sighs, and I wonder how much my art piece sold for. Layer of marine haze tinged with brown, the ozone hole growing, closing in biological arithms, dedications to death, the healing power of green and the fire of magenta. 

The man with the guitar surveys his handiwork in the garden. With a few cord changes, Eurydice is looking back over her shoulder where darkness sat waiting to find the center of her eye, jostling her with paradox how much we savor without knowing the sense of vision. 

Mount Vision in Point Reyes with its strange helicopter pad and orange mushroom radar. Like a Stonehenge of sorts. What's strange quarry gave birth to them? 

The chupping of a robin in the chaparral, such comforting sounds – the dead one on my doorstep. I guess it's time to draw the robins again.

I am a mover of small rocks. From Oaxaca, and Monte Alban, the small pottery shards fit into the. niche on the north peak of Mount St. Helena. We invent ritual. I take back five rocks and find a huge quartz crystal, my talisman. 

At the big rock, with no other name, this megaliths on our hill, the Christmas day ritual, was to visit it with my grandmother. The sorrow washing over me and waves, caught between laughter and rock. 

From Mount St. Helena I take volcanic red rock and leave it there, and from this place I take ouartz from the ridge outside of Guerneville. I placed both rocks in a pyramid, making a triangle. Cairns to keep me safe.

At Armstrong Woods, after my ritual, four vultures came. Three from the north and one from the south. They converged over my crude altar made of stones – I left corn and bread, cranberry juice and smoke from sage. My crystal rocks pointing north receiving instructions, the rocks I brought back from St. Helena, the one from the top of my childhood hill. 

At the big rock, a bluejay and a hawk were my gifts. On the volcano, a crystal was my gift. On the ridge, for vultures circling and weaving feather and sky with shiny black feathers.

Blue schist slabs. I understand something more of geology. I have become a connoisseur of rocks, igneous, Franciscan, metamorphic.

I have forgotten all the rules. The club flag keeps whipping out prayers to the wind.

The sea answers. She is our mother. These shells, these rocks, are gifts and we will clean oil from the wings of birds because we were born into this passage. 

The passage of a fellow soul is marked in the striated silver of my bracelets, dentalian and Jasper. The churning breathing of the sea, I've begun to tell the trees things I never knew I had inside. 

The whispering of women, all those sea sounds. Surcease of wave, the crunch of rock and rolling of tires on pavement. Coyote brush in bloom. Timeout. People laughing. Just keep on going, one says. The whisper of the sea, the flag, we are all learning new languages to keep us on the shores.

 I am in a camera facing the iris of my thoughts. The diaphragm open and close, open and close, like the contrasting and expanding universe. I capture some snippets of emotion after 20 days of testimony from the sea. The elegance of necessity crystallizes into a single vortex, the sea churning and churning, rising like a cover for sleeping bodies.

I dreamt I was in the city house, the twin beds of my grandparents hiding their arms, were they dead? No, only sleeping. I say, excuse me I didn't know you were there. 

My grandfather is someone I don't recognize, he looks Italian and is smooth with the ladies. We talk soft so not to disturb my grandmother, she needs to sleep. And I comply, but who is this man to tell me this? He is my father whom I have not seen in 15 years. I dream of guns and falling over backwards, of sickness, and rolling on the ground with dogs. All this on the day Robert Duncan died.

2/5/1988

CPITS wokshop
this freewrite morphed into two poems

• TURNING STONES (after Layer of Marine Haze)
• LAYER OF MARINE HAZE (aka Turning Stones)