Category: Uncategorized

Coition

was after
dried roses
that ether-death
sickness of after
smell gone
that last warm cold goodness of after
a longtime
meant promise of after
cigarette/heavy
breathing of
after
toilet flush
after
padding feet back to
a rustle of covers
of after, after
slamming doors behind
strained voices of
after beginning before
an end of after always
before the bright
deaf rendering thunder
silent dark flashing
shudder of after
& together before

 

Independence Day & other Greek words

The sufficient crowd
Where the lean attitudes
Culminate
The town or the country
The outlying geography
Of containment & submission
The giving in marriage
The man and woman of relation
The public parade of Eros
The missing meal of Agape
The barroom of Philia
It does seem Hollywood only likes adultery

The willful negation of Logos
These tangible criteria,
As if the world were spun anthropicly
On fingertips of our reason, the motion set
The will cocked, of halfwardly so,

The unfathomable bang a
Spot in space and time, not
Realizing there was no space &
Time before

The judgment by ourselves,
Be primarily in ourselves
& may we have the grace to be
Loving & kind & in a weltering rush
& drink before dawn
A dream—the where of now
The here of it,
The breath of is, may this love
Bring us fruit, each & each of who
We’re meant to be & have been all along.

The Red Gate

That last time I was to the farm
where running through creeks, chasing
small birds and my imagination,
I had grown up
there was a red gate my Grandfather had built

Much of the paint had blistered and peeled
as its weight had pulled the corner post
forward toward the earth that it also
had leaned for, still functional but barely so

Fashioned with boards and bolts that
had gone through hand augured holes by
brace and bit—I still remember
that tools’ shininess from years of use

The gate separated the farm from
an adjacent well-to do horse ranch
where fine Arabians pawed at the
sawdust in tight functional stalls

North of the gate had been our barn
that burned several winters before the funeral
all the animals had gotten out & though
the gate was only five feet away it stood,
a bit charred still, & latched to the fence

It had swung open mostly for bartered loads
of hay and occasionally for myself, to get closer
to a fox or deer in the next field and sometimes
to deliver Christmas cakes to affluent neighbors

The farm changed hands to distant relations
by marriage; who after the funeral came offering
condolences and money — I stood there looking
at its form as the content of memories, of ghosts,
of the distance of wealth, of long ago laughter
of a presence of sorrow the screeched
like a rusty hinge

I Saw Ted Barr Smiling…

I saw Ted Barr smiling
That self-assured smile that Teddy smiled
Full of himself and his friends
I saw Ted Barr smiling down a long shot freeze frame
off the railroad tracks from the back of the Hersey street house
Where you could see half way through this little jumbled up town
I saw Ted Barr smiling at an empty paint spattered easel
And the guitar stand standing now on Union street
But I saw Ted Barr smiling from Clancy’s Pub
In Dublin town and I saw Ted Barr smiling
in the Log Cabin on the Plaza & the “Good” Club &
I saw Ted Barr smiling at the oars in the small row boat
through the morning mist and the glass surface of Immigrant Lake
I saw Ted Barr smiling now a true new immigrant on the shore we have yet to go.
It’s where I saw Ted smiling on his friends that loaded Teddy grin..
I saw that smile on Skidmore street where a brush with death
Brought on an on rush of oil and sweat and sweet fullness and life, lugubrious
Thighs and breast and haunch and thigh and pert cheeked tongued
Women on canvass, I saw Ted Barr smiling on oil and death and long legged
Sex in our life’s dance on pity and blood and the half-light of the last of the last
Summer of a Century of so damn much pain –I saw Ted Barr smiling
Teddy who’d never got caught in the cob web of what ‘ought’ to be
I saw Ted Barr smiling at the piano keyboard on Union street
I saw Teddy smiling the blues, I saw Ted smiling at us
I saw Ted Barr smiling at his one true piece of art— his own Amanda
Proud father he was I saw Ted Barr smiling at us that loaded fat Teddy grin
& I can’t pound these keys hard enough to let you know that howling wolf growl
because I saw Ted Barr smiling…

these days that run

these days
that run to
one another
as ingots
flow to
the mold
are they
for us
the sum total of
our ancestors
genes?

these days
that run into
one another
as the river
meets the sea
backing up
to an ebb
then flowing
out on moon’s
command,
are they for us?

these days
that run
to one another
leaving traces
imperceptible
as a wren
leaving a blade
of tall grass
are they
for us,
whose memory
makes so
much of where we’ve been?

these days
that run
toward
the other
with unending
finality
are they
blamelessly
for us?

these days
that run for
one another
steeped in
inception
& unseen
indelibility,
must be
for us..

Love is..

Love is like a changing
flight of small birds
through a snow flurry,
that though it is,
they’ve never paid
the rent two days late,
or had a shut off notice
for a late electric bill
appear on the front door,
yet it is–they know of unseen seeds
amid whiteness and moisture,
there but to be looked for,
unworried in the finding
and its integrity,
as confusion becomes
what the wind whips
and not the wind itself,
so much is taken care of
in the on rush of life,
making doubt and insecurity
a snowflake
dissolving beautifully
on your arm.

Love may be

Love may be a greybearded old man
giving great belly laughs out of
a tobacco stained yellow shirt
while small birds light and perch
& small children play in vacant
lots & an osprey fishes in cold
northwest waters with its aerial
view of trout making headway against
currents & we in complacency
think of all the sane reasons not
to watch the six o’clock news as
three women in Puerto Vallarta wrap
crayfish with cornmeal in husks
to steam into tamales for their
children to sell on the beach, all
for what we have to have..

Bear kill on deer hunt

Talk softly to the Bear
in his dying, apologize
profusely–commend him
his courage as he stood
before you–stood! mind you
stood upright as you
before his death,
your own self,
you who pulled the trigger
and sent the bullet
meant for venison
that ripped out his throat,
five yards from your own.

Talk softly to the Bear
in his dying, apologize
remorsefully, commend him
his life as connected
to your own
& from your perspective
in a lasting way,
for he would have killed you
or left many scars.

Talk softly to the Bear
in his dying, apologize
with wry humor
make a fine rug of his brown hide,
commend him his courage of life & spirit,
every time you walk by;
but disparage his intellect,
tell him he should have kept
running from your partner
who stumbled through
the manzanita brush patch
that was his hiding place
with an unloaded gun.

Talk softly to the Bear
in his dying, apologize
sincerely, commend him
his spirit–send it back
to where it came,
as he lays next to
the knic-ki-knick leaves,
know the sound he makes..,
“UHHNNNUUUUUUU!”
Remember this all your life.

Demoiselle

In the last part of that time of dusk
when shadows meet the first departure of light.
over three fingers of the river
a Great Blue Heron performed an aerial pirouette.

Down with wisped blue gray feathers braking air
and into one side of a small island,
a fan of tail, a wing dipping
and to the other side,
where eddies and small pools
held more frogs and minnows,
only to see a man fly casting and then
beat wings hard, around and again upward
through reddened light–down river.

That moment, bare, infinite,
myself standing in sand,
exchanging cigarettes and amenities
with another fisherman,
whose back is turned upstream
to the sound of faster water
I could not call his attention to this sight
and continued our conversation, with the sound
of river as chorus–I remembered the long legs
of a woman I’d met the night before, as
gray blue wings passed
slow and noiseless over our heads.

After the Hull Mountain Fire

That third summer after the Hull Mountain Fire
I picked black-cap raspberries with my youngest son
Where my upper cabin had been..
& as he was five —we made pie..
Half dozen pies if my memory is right
& even if it is not I do remember
A sweetest of wild tart taste to those lightly sugared pies
We made in my propane oven late in August, &
Shared with friends & me having survived
Two years of single fatherhood,
Adept at answering all
Questions with not all the facts
Told to this child
Amid fireweed, blowing white seed
For a light purpled white breeze
From that still black landscape where fire had burned
& we were at the upper cabin site where I wrote..
Where the black-cap raspberries had vined into profusion &
Were delivering black goodness one-by-one
Into my stainless steel pail & my son was happy,
Two years before this afternoon
He’d put his cherub three year-old face into his small hands
Drowned with tears &
behind our house he sobbed, “I have lost my family!”
One year before that day,
I tended the fire line I built with my oldest son;
Before the fire hit us–when it did
It burned slowly downhill from the box canyon
Over the ridge where much differently it set pine needles, in
Hundred foot high tops of old growth
Ponderosa Pine, curled to the exact direction this
Hundred twenty foot conflagration blast furnace
Came out of the canyon & spilled downhill
Creeping & calming to a twenty foot wall of flame,
Half mile from the ridge & thirty feet from my back door,
Three years afterwards you could still see in tops of Ponderosa snags’
Black needles pointing the flames exact direction from
Hell of that day where,
After the fire line was complete around our home &
Having taken my family all to the valley below
To watch our mountain burn
By a swimming pool—fearful but safe..
I  came back to tend the fire line alone
Arriving pretty much as the fire did & taking
Comfort in this feat I then began to keep it that way
With a shovel until my good friend Graham
Evaded National Guard at the bottom of the hill
& drove up the three miles of bad road into
A forest fire to help me
Our fire-line held that night probably because
A Mexican fire crew found us at two in the morning,
& relieved our aching backs
& I made them all heavily sugared coffee
& as they tended the line,
A burning tree fell on the house at three A.M.
Three of them cut it away with axes
At smoking dawn, I remember talking
With their foreman about the beaches of Nayarit..
San Francisco, lo de Marco & La Penita de Jaltembre,
We saved the lower cabin which was our home;
It did not burn that night; I lost the upper cabin.
This fire had turned a corner like an angry police car
& burned back uphill consuming its red wood deck & its
Windows blew out on the side hill as
Fire & 5000 acres of burning forest had
Melted my cast iron wood cook-stove
Into a sway-back hulk from a greater furnace
Than itself & it is now a rusted artifact twenty feet
From the black-cap berry vines
I got pies from that day..
Fire took the life of a tractor operator a day after
It took my cabin
& one year from the fire I was divorcing..
& for a time
I raged like a hundred-foot blaze.

Oregon Dirt Farm

Our creek was about a half- mile
from its entrance to the River
an adjacent ranch pumped water
from a dam it made thirty feet
from our fence & the creek backed
up each summer to flood a feeder
ditch to a pump that rerouted the tributary
over 500 acres, lifted the water from a
Massive electric pump & poured water
on dry desert ground to irrigate alfalfa,
Deep growing legumes, & we
Leased this ranch one year while the land
Changed owners, I cut hay, raked hay, bucked
Bales of hay & we sold nearly all of it in massive tight
Stacks, where other small farms would come &
Buy this one year boon that we’d come by, in this process
I had a free run of 500 acres that was liberating at 15,
having been confined to 20 before that time, the
River became my own, with four good riffles & a salmon hole
There were pear trees & a pond that had two foot trout
That produced one every other cast, I worked all summer
& helped build a shop and earned at the end of the summer
Twenty dollars, & was pleased to get it & buy a cheap military surplus
Deer rifle, & it dawned on me decades later, that I was really some sort
Of bond slave, but I never had a thought of that as
Every hot afternoon on a tractor, & working with my
Grandfather, real farming seemed to me to be the greatest adventure
Of my life, it was the last serious farming my grandfather did
& before the depression he had owned a similar spread,
& the money financed good things of which I have no recollection
I do remember sense of the wealth of the earth,
& the smell of new mown hay and the dust of the harrow before we planted oats
I remember taking a friend of mine, a punk just moved up from L.A.
To the river & pointing out quick sand & watching him swagger
Out onto it & tell me I was full of it & when he began to
Jump up & down I saw him sink to his armpits,
& I pulled him out laughing hard, & that
Summer was probably the best summer of my life up to then
Big farm meals, morning, noon & evening hard work but plenty
Of time to do wild things between the haying and the harvest
When the owner came the next year their gentrified ways took over
But they let me and no others, still have the run of the place except
I couldn’t shoot their deer, & I made good use of the riffles & could
Hunt ducks off the far pond, where the trout, took dry flies
& spinners every evening, I saw a world expand & purpose &
Our 20 acres had been sufficient for subsistence but that summer
My Grandfather & my uncle and I sweated for money, I had no notion of
Other than the twenty dollar rifle,
that killed big black tail bucks,& my friend who ignored the quicksand warning,
became a heroin addict in 1972, & current ranch owners who are not gentry
shot a neighbor kid with rock salt–for fishing in their pond.

Song

Lupine purple lupine & deep
Mountain blue on right
Lupine blue, blue lupine
& Blue then turns white
Chaparral down in Mule Creek on
Left & the sliding rocks betray
A coyote after, fawns
& their spring time slow
Lupine purple lupine
White ones now grow
Uphill trail gives it up to a saddle back
& Lupine blue & white all the way

300 years

Acorn woodpeckers zoomed between the oaks
Ka k aka akaing to their machine gun ridden hidey holes
On trees, snags in a dead limb & a power pole, & sometimes
Under the eaves of our house,
Colonial birds these in
Oak trees, birds — a 100 or more in all
& three breeding pairs four at most,
On the Oregon side-hill near a 20 acre farm black&white
Black & white red heads Ka k aka ak kaing zooming  up & down between
The farm house, the guest house & the barn,
& a crack of a  twenty-two &  a
Miss & the second shot tumbles the little flying cop car
out of the tree & out of the sky, with iron peep sights, &
The boy’s been given charge— “kill ‘em all,” he said,
“They’re drilling holes in our house!” it was not too
Serious, but a bird or two a week fell, examined then tossed aside
Years later in text book he read of their nature with all
Breeding pairs when killed or predated, became new breeding pairs & all would
Become breeding pairs if need be, for a steady population
& this was the answer to the fact that the birds never went a way,
While the oaks were there spreading out
Over the house the hillside & making those summers cool when it was
Hot, and the wood peckers flew, and bred and laid eggs
In their hidey holes, high in oaks where a little rot could
Be hollowed out in a spring time banging sound &
With the heads sticking out, Ka k aka ak kaing
& this small misunderstanding seemed to make
No less harmony on the hill, with our sheep, & steers
& a ground squirrel killing border collie, but
Now I look on Google Earth & see the oaks are gone —all of them
The cedars were taken out 25 years ago, &
I know now the woodpeckers have finally departed, &
I haven’t been back
Since these new people fell the cedars—I’m no druid
But the oaks were there three hundred years,
& the woodpeckers had a colony for at least that long
& though it’s perhaps the worst thing I could think of to say, but
To have them back, I would stay—300 years