MELANCHOLY

MELANCHOLY

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

 7/28/80

WHETSTONE

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

DOWN AMONG THE BONES

DOWN AMONG THE BONES

The slumbering giant,

I saw  his crematory eye

spark and ignite

the memory of the night hour

whose hour has come

before his red rimmed eye?

I pick myself up among the bones

You are the dreamer and you are the dream

You scatter rose petals into the sea

I separate the chaff from the grain

I am the gleaner, I am the dream

and the mud oozes over your dreams

What seed is this that sprouts

from the breast of the universe?

From the edge of night you look up

and you stare into that vacant sky

You look for the edge

The shaft of light penetrates

the eye of the dreamer

the womb of the universe

where the tidal forces of your life flows

It is the spine of the ridge

where the red wind blows

In the mud you find the edge

the edge is in the arms of the red wind.

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

THAT I AM COYOTE

THAT I AM COYOTE, ii

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

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

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

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

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

We are the first-born of Coyote.

1980

A SONG OF SORROW

    for Meriden Le Seuer

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

7/13/1980
Port Townsend, WA

POEM FOR RUSTY NORTH'S HANDS

POEM FOR RUSTY NORTH'S HANDS

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

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

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

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

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

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

Port Townsend Poetry Conference 1980 (photo)

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

Writing at Centrum

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

added 2/2017

BUCKEYE

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

7/1/1980

Wild Cherries

WILD CHERRIES

                   —for Robert Bruce Hamilton, wherever you are

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

16 voices poetry reading at Artrium, SRJC

Poetry readings June - December

TREE RINGS

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

6/21/1980
Solstice

Barn swallow (drawing)

CHANT FOR THE LINE OF COAST, Horicon School

CHANT FOR THE LINE OF COAST

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

river path 

winding 

wind path 

river sound 

frog leap 

salmon dance 

river sound 

wind leap 

wind dance 

river dance

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

pointing north

June 1980   

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

Two short poems: DISTANCE, ACROSS THE SKY

DISTANCE 

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

5/12/1980

ACROSS THE SKY

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

5/18/1980

Poetry readings in May

Big Russell Ranch, Yreka, Oral History

BIG RUSSEL RANCH

Edith Hazlan Howard remembers:

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

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

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

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

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

Hyacinths

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

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

Edith Hazlet Howard remembers:

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

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

An early version of  WOMAN IS OF THE OCEAN

MORNING COMES IN AWASH

Morning comes in awash

with sunlight the color of apples.

A bluejay banging away at the window

with a need to build her nest,

searches for a place to call home,

not remembering from day to day

that the window is still there.

Still, she comes

trying to find a way in.

Even if she could,

her chances are no better

today than yesterday.

Her instinct surely guides her,

and when she finds the right spot,

she'll know her need, while I

continue to stare out this window,

making no move at all.

4/18/1980
rev. 1984
Forestville

WOMAN IS OF THE OCEAN

WOMAN IS OF THE OCEAN

As the earth unleashes its hold upon spring,

bees brush morning with their wings.

The eye gathers in clouds of apple blossoms.

Is it a woman's desire to wait upon the land

with the sound of the ocean filling her

leaving only the fish to nourish her

during the long drought?

The whale returns to the north, toward home;

she returns south to mate, to give birth

and to feed upon the krill.

There is where home lies.

Man talks in symbols.

He spreads sperm in damp wings.

The labial fire burns and dies.

Veins carry in the eye of the storm

and the coastline of the mouth 

is treacherous.

4/18/1980
rev 7/1980
Ear to the Ground SSU Poetry Festival chapbook, 1980

BOARDED WINDOWS

Boarded windows
The white eyes of the blind
The migration of sand dunes, grain by grain.
A violation of the land as it tilts
downward into the sea.

4/12/1980
Navarro Ridge
Poetry reading at Doug’s loft, Bill Bradd, Leonard Cirino, River, Sharon Doubiago, Feather, me.

Poetry time log, getting paid was an illusion

I was simultaneously holding down several jobs for SSU, the Public Poetry Center, the InterCultural Center, and also CPITS. I was still under the illusion that I would actually get paid for my work so I kept note, but when I realized it was dust in the wind, I quit worrying about it, and just got on with it. But then I lived for poetry. It defined me. And I was also teaching at several schools as well. This log begins with the dreaded Robert Bly, reading where he mistreated me, and I put on the event for him, got him paid. I never forgave him.

 

Ghost trees, Michael Dow Workshop

During the winter it got dark early, we had double sessions at school and I got home after 5 PM. The cantilevered boughs of the trees reached across the long road that wove in and out of the trunks like a gray snake heading north. There were fallen trees decomposing along either side of the creek that ran alongside the road. My flashlight failed at the bridge. In the twilight, their light bark glowed faintly and they lay in waiting like great lumbering phosphor worms  and my fear rose up within me like a great black cape of smothering darkness.


3/20/1980 ?
added 5/3/2016
Michael Dow Workshop
freewrite

Sonnet Form Michael Dow Workshop

Sonnet Form

Mist morning when it is quiet
and the lips of fog kiss
the sky, beneath it, a riot
of flowers blossom in the dark abyss

The wind rustles the petals in the plum trees
bringing a snowstorm of blossoms in June
the vines are choking the bottom growth, and the peas
blossom—a late frost may strike and prune

the new buds with black tongue
before the growth's barely begun.

3/20/1980
 added 5/3/2016

Michael Dow Workshop

NEWSPAPER

The wind from a passing car
catches the edges of a newspaper
lying by the side of the road
and lifts it up like a startled cat.

AT GOAT ROCK

Light drips from the sky
at Goat Rock, lips of dawn fog
gobble up the sky.

2/24/1980

3 FRAGMENTS, CPITS freewrites

I am a plant walking
along the sunset
my leaves rain
clouds on the ocean

i send roots down
into rocks
they split apart
and I seek light

at the end of my roots
I feel light
it is soft and warm
like guava jelly

My tendrils pluck stars
from the sky
they ignite as I bring them in
closer

Meteor showers
bathe me
as stellar dust
settles in,

2/21/1980


I roll like a velvet green ocean
across the valleys and hills
the open spaces between fields
In the morning I am warmed by the east
at noon I grow toward the sub
as it shows me how
As the sun sets and the dew collects
on myt blades, sheep
graze on me, they pull
my edges up like a moveable feast.

2/21/1980



I wish I could show you
the beating of my heart
the stirring of breath
the pulsing of blood
through the capillaries
veins and arteries
Could you see the heat
rising from my body
and collecting into fog
and the rain coming down?

2/21/1980


CPITS workshops—freewrites (unedited)
Petaluma ES, with Will Staple
Cloverdale HS, with Lee Perron

LOVE, ITSELF

LOVE, ITSELF

Love itself

has no season, no time

to turn the rhythm of our souls.

As if by convection our breath

is  snatched away and suspended

from mist particles along

the pounding shore

2/1980

Page from the Marin Poetry Center anthology 1982?

A POTTER'S FIELD—FOR BETTY WALL

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

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

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

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

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


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

Benefit show Guerneville Vetrans Bldg

CPITS benefit reading at Guerneville Vets.

I didn’t realize that Pat Nolan was poetry editor of the Sonoma County Stump before I came along six months later.

HES students peek into past through art

HES students peek into past through art

Healdsburg Elementary School students, along with interested parents, teachers and community members, got a sneak preview Wednesday of the school's upcoming Winter Arts program The presentation was part of the Fourth K program at HES. Artists from Sonoma County, 14 in all, came to the school to demonstrate what they will teach the students while in residency there. • The arts and crafts will help teach history and social studies to the students, in addition to the traditional methods of study. Students will be able to understand foreign cultures by learning the crafts people had to know for survival in past cultures, according to program coordinator Lee Perron. Sixth graders will be studying Japan. China, Russia, Israel. Latin America and various European nations. Fifth graders will study early American history. Fourth graders will lake up the early history of California. Arts and crafts in the winter program include: candle making, soap making by Elwin Millerick, pottery by Tony Evans, mask making by Greer Upton, calligraphy by Maureen Hurley, puppet making by Jan VanSchuyver, leaded glass by Mark Allen, weaving by Lynn Lewbel Mecce, paper making by Deborah Soloman, charcoal drawing by Armondo Gomez, music by Philip VanGelder, pine needle basket making by Marisa de Joseph, silk screening by Kino Novella and spinning and carding by Cynthia Gallager and Linda Gardelto.

MOMENTS STRETCHED LIKE SPUN GLASS

MOMENTS STRETCHED LIKE SPUN GLASS

i want you to feel those moments

between waking and sleeping

when your hands mold mountains from my breasts

like the soft milky clay of china

when your teeth graze the transluscent flesh

of my thighs, my shoulders, my neck as you inhale my flesh

our mouths lose their way in dark forests

yours protecting mine from the darkness of sleep

i want your hands to cradle my hips like a bowl of ripe persimmons

glistening in winter sunlight, becoming sunlight

i want to feel your life bloom against the lining

of our bellies like the desert after the first spring rain

i want to wrap myself in a ceremonial feathered cloak

hear the cry of hawks echo from the snowy peaks of the Andes

and sink my teeth, like some wild animal from the steaming jungle

into your hand until it bleeds the color of my rage

i want your death to brush my cheek

like a cat rubbing against the leg of Captain Ahab

petit mort resting on your eyelashes

like fine ash cinders blurring our vision

or breath condensing on the mirror

your tongue curls snail-like

tracing patterns of seashells in my ear,

it trails along the ridge of my spine

it cleaves the bilateral symmetry of my back

and the front of my body, connecting my mouths

our pulses beating in unison, roaring in our ears

like rivers during spring flood

along such symmetry to the moist path

a sinewy rainforest of pollen, musk, honey

in our nostrils, in our mouths, as we flow to the sea,

our tongues, dolphins at play

bathing us in darkness and in light

this day, a moment stretched like spun glass

between waking and sleeping

but as you feed me this nectar of our bodies

it profanes the air we breathe for you withhold your heart

relenquishing our clear hold upon this day

1/15/1980

Pac's Field

Just past Pac's Field, where Russian wolfhounds test the boundaries of their domain, with the grace of deer, or rippling wind—is an island. No, it's more of a peninsula, where two watery divisions intersect. Nestled between the confluence of two creeks, is the remains of an old deer camp, abandoned a half-century ago, yet a presence is still held in the shadows of bay leaves cloaking the ground and filtering the sunlight.

Watchful leaves guard this place with cool breath, even in summer, when outside, the field grasses and crickets hiss and snap like embers from distant fires. From dry arroyos, comes a small chorus of creeks rippling on a thirsty earth. Leaves guard this place, elliptic sylvan tongues suckling and whispering imprinted in the language of trees; I can't tell if what I hear is the sound of water, or leaves.

Remains of a stone hearth, a rusted coffee can with a baling wire handle, rusted bed springs, a crushed hip flask. Someone called this place home. A rotting food-keeper—each night, generations of hopeful raccoons still probe the shelves with dark hands. Genetic memory is like that; persistent and unremarkable.

Chin-high in the crotch of an oak, a stiff leather strop hangs from a rusted nail, a straight-edge razor, fused shut, and an old shaving mirror—silver back peeling like orange fungus. A thinly veiled message of watery glass, reflects and separates the eye from what's real, as if to keep us from seeing through a jigsaw of red-ochre earth, and the secret history of trees, to the blue ache of summer sky. Nose buried in the sweeping wealth of Califia's tawny grasslands, my horse samples each mouthful as if it were her last.

Though wise in the way of fences, my horse still keeps a practiced eye on the relentless wolfhounds testing the fence. The age-old dance of hunter and prey, ever-present. In the pool, sunning turtles, sport red-stripes on their heads—as if someone took a razor to them. Red, only true color in a landscape awash with the brightness of summer.

More than a mile away from the nearest memory of railway lines, this hobo camp slumbers on an island in time. Steel tracks pulled up during the war years, another addendum to history. Fifty years, a half-life since this place was abandoned, yet a presence is still felt in the leaves, and I can't tell if what I hear is the sound of trees, or the sound of water.

1/15/1980
rev. 2007, 2014

TO STANDARD OIL & OPEC

TO STANDARD OIL AND OPEC

Rusted ’49 chassis
buried in the grass—
its pelvic shape
like the discolored bones
of dinosaurs.

Hip bones of automobiles
crawling back into the earth;
their slow death rattle
is heard in the rain.

1/15/1980 Sonoma County Stump, 12/17/81

HES to kick off winter arts program

HES to kick off winter arts program

Healdsburg Elementary School is opening its doors to all interested parents and residents Wednesday, Jan 16 (or the school’s annual arts demonstration day The event, scheduled for 10 a m -noon and 1-3 p m , is an inauguration for the HES winter arts program The assembly and upcoming program will feature more than a dozen artists donating their time to share crafts with students Among the crafts to the demonstrated will be paper making, mask making, weaving, spinning, calligraphy, clay sculpture, soap carving, quilt making and basket weaving.

Later in the semester, HES students will learn the various crafts as part of the school's social studies through the arts program, funded this year through a grant from the Bank of America In addition to program coordinator and poet Lee Perron, artists participating in the program will include: Greer Upton, Michael Gonzales, Elwin Millerick, Lynn Lubel, Armando Gomez, Philip VanGelder, Jan VanSchuyver, Maureen Hurley. Deborah Soloman, Sharon Robinson, Marisa de Joseph and Wende Williams. All are Sonoma county artists and teachers

Following the demonstrations, a Fourth R planning meeting will make final decisions on the arts program for the remainder of the year

SUNSHINE: THE POET AT 4

SUNSHINE

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

1/1980
Fort Bragg, Mendocino

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

ITS HABITS AND ITS NEEDS

ITS HABITS AND ITS NEEDS

it's lean  and lithe    endowed with sharp claws   
                               it is day in these mountains
                                where they feared to tread 
                             they've been here some time

jaguar

red tiger

silver lion

mountain
devil                        it is day in these mountains
                                 where they feared to tread
                              they've been here some time

                               and now it is mostly known

puma           

cougar 

catamount

mountain 
lion                           endowed with sharp claws
                                  it's day in these mountains
                                  where they feared to tread
                                 and now it's mostly known

the big cat requires                      too much room

(and who has seen                      panther tracks?)

there seems to be no                  reasonable doubt

cat of the mountains                          is in trouble

it is almost day                      i n these mountains

now it's mostly known                     they've been

here some time.                     mountain screamer

& it appears            nature hasn't succeeded

it seems likely                        in these mountains

because it is day                     in these mountains
where it is known                       we fear to tread

 date? early work! It was a big deal to get the alignment with a typewriter

FAX SIMILE

FAX SIMILE

Hey word

don't be afraid.

Take a sad fax

and make it flutter.

Remember

to get it into your ink

and you'll think

you'll take it better.

no date

80-84ish

A DROWNING MAN (the stirring of something else)

A drowning man does not need to know

how to carry a staggering load

or that stars may go out

in a single gesture.

He does not need to know

the blue-red tint of his skin's

the color of angry twilight,

or that the foam spewing from his lipsó

the frenzied sea.

He does not need to know

my shadow that once had its sweet hours

in the grass is primordial in its loneliness.

That I wake myself up from sleep

to comprehend the idea of suicide

or that I began to write his poem

seven years before his own death

was predicted on a sunny beach in Chiapas;

his whole family bearing witness 

to the casual departure of life. The 

The men who failed to inspire him

carried his corpse to the waiting pick-up

like an inanimate sack of flesh and lard.

The wide disbelieving eyes

of his young daughters

as they watched their papá carted off

like so much meat from the butchers.

He does not need to know your eyes

repeat the wind's reckless secrets,

the sky fills up with jade beads,

and the stirring of something else—

another small life taken before it's begun.

1980                       7/10/1979?
rev. 88

 (This is from an earlier version so I posted it on the date when it was first written. Since I later witnessed a drowning man's death, the poem was changed to fit the events.)

BELOW THE ROCK

BELOW  THE  ROCK

The loam spreads itself
ankle-deep    bay laurel
roots follow  the  rock's
roots all the way  down
to water.      The barren
tree   stripped of leaves
is a sign       of the long
           drought.

1980
may be earlier
added 10/16

THE SHAPE OF THINGS

THE SHAPE OF THINGS                  

Moisture blesses this valley.  

Following winter's shearing weather,    

trees sprout new growth that conforms   

to the patterns of the wind that dictates    

the shape of things to come.

While waiting for the storm to pass, 

wandering clouds & sheep sculpt                

grassy edges on the mountain-sides.     

Hawks stand still against the inflamed 

wind roaring through the taller pines  

scorched by older fires.      

Fog softening the hillsides   

condenses around my face    

& rises like a storm under my coat    

until I am drenched inside and out.        

Under dark trees, lost souls of moths        

collect & flutter around my face        

as if I were the only pale flame  

flickering in the forest.  
                     

1/80  Forest Knolls   

REV 3/81 for (see below)
The Child in the Bell, CPITS Statewide Anthology, 1981-82
rev. 5/88   see original