Tag: Poetry

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..

Guns

Sporadic gunfire
in the distance
of the hills,
& the Fall’s hunt
was always
the Octobered drysmell
of chaparral
& that clean mean click
of manzanita breaking
through the drivers,
coming down & out of
far recessed ravines,
where the large
lone black-tail bucks waited
their solitude
for the coming rut,
only to be flushed
out of almost impassable
hiding, & then the high
powered velocity of the crack
of a modern firearm
would deliver the yearly venison
tabled later
in the fall,
perennially seasoned
w/salt & black peppered
for biscuits & gravy,
the crisp taste of the High Cascade,
I remember how,
our bitch border collie shepherd dog
would cower in her corner,
teeth chattering,uncontrollably and shaking,
shaking, at that near& far rifle fire.

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.

Oh My God!

My God lives, and lives
Eternally, untouched by blemish, & across time between past & present,
My living God outside Creator of time and space
Lord of my life keeps me beside
Still waters of His own breast
Dew dropped sweet smelling
Aroma of the just about to rain summer cloud coming soon like,
& to me always….
He is lifting up my soul amidst all
That will fail, my God and Lord
Of my life lives apart from a back drop
of false certainty, lives brighter than shining
Metal of commerce & moves
Fulcrum of universal sprawl unconcerned
By the mere motor freight..
Of an Atlas rocket, my God’s mighty
Hand is on the back of enemies,
He lifts up my friends, & makes enemies friends, my God lives in
Surety of my own life,
Finally grasped, at the lofty position I fall
On my knees, bowing head, knowing worship
& utter insignificance of self, though juxtaposed to Your love
Lifts back up turns, round & I see..
Here there are riches in poverty, & meanness in prosperity
Thankfully, now this is turned upside down
Because of our daily bread,
On earth as in Heaven & hovering
Beside an estate of evil in residence,
a side show.. really
& then turning again to see power in the seemingly
Ineffectual stillness of a quiet dawn,
Love behind the giving way of hate,
Oh, my God, personal.. and there, my Lord, Christ Jesus
Who drug His cross, who heard,
“Where is his God now…why didn’t He…
“Get a home in the Jerusalem suburbs, “or, “build up
his fathers business, so much talent wasted?”
and. “He coulda retired in Capernaum, had a couple of boats,”
or, “Why-didn’t-he-just-take-care-of-his-mother?”
my God sweet loving victorious failure to reach this material world–as it sees itself
Lord, two thousand years of sorrow & faith, pulling
Up the dying , pulling up & hoping the hopeless, straightening crooked paths..
reaching out in Love, & Life & Word to lift us to abundant life.. as
An eternal priceless gift…a secret revealed so simple,
So complex—you must understand I-am-the-richest-of-men-because
this salvation changed all the rules in space and time!

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.

If I look out the window

Blonde, sunglasses
Dark suited miniskirt
Large belt
w/tight beige pants
Could be a model..
Standing at an outside table
Of this coffee house
If I look out the window
From drinking my joe
I can’t see anything else but her
Talking through her cell phone device
Clipped in her ear, just barely perceptible
Adamant, using both hands
For expression, articulate
It seems, making points,
Striding around a little round table
& between chairs
As if a stage
& this was performance.
This is all normal now..
Less than twenty years ago
This would have been observed
As psychotic behavior,
Talking to someone who is
Obviously not there & not holding a phone,
Or rehearsing a play
My friends (some of them)
Think the same of me
When I pray…

Two voices

Two voices from a campfire
Long ago–or how,
According to Stumbling Bear, the dog
Animal came to run w/man

“Let us go kill this dog
animal/use his fur &
eat of his meat

we can trap him
with snares
for he is greedy
for offal from the kill

his fur is thick &
sticks tight to
the pelt.”

“No! He has keen
eyes of a hunter,
cares for his family
& is loyal to his mate,
he can smell the stag
two mountains away

Let us wait to
talk to him &
his wife, boast of
our kill, for this
year is very full

We will ask them
to run w/us, they
can smell out game,
eat their fill of gut
& then stay close

In the winter
when the herds are gone, then we can use their fur
& eat their tender children.”

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.

First Contact

complex
the scion of ourselves
together,
Jesus coming in a leather jacket,
love being binding truth
whatall & why not w/ everything
connected to everything else
the small joke being incessantly
onus, the sleepers, compartmentalists,
bureaucrats, casual buddhists, fundamentalists,
clients, zombiebodies in the unemployment line,
the men’s business breakfast, all up
& down cannery row
save the faithful @ mass
but all equally guiltily asleep
in the church, the chapel, the synagogue, the mosque,
the buddha boy’s temple
& everywhere else & the numbers
click & tabulate & go ’round,
as the gas pump goes ’round
there’s been a lot of hands reaching up
there’s been only one reaching down
& the all in all being
accounted for in an extraterrestrial plexus
of where we’ve been
where we’re going
& what we shall be …or
or cease to be
unless there is acknowledged—First Contact

this abundant life

I can no longer call them homeless, not because they aren’t,
I’m not relegating them to the planet, nation, community,
or under an overpass, card board box, tent in blackberry bushes, & not because
I’ve seen families living in Africa with as much—or much less..

I can no longer call them homeless
I chose to call them Rotarian
that we may work for relief of especial needs
of others out of good will
see plight, acknowledge pain, knowing
we all need four walls for this abundant life

One of them told me, “I stopped being able to live indoors about 20 years ago.
Don’t know what it is, I do alright..,” he said, as I dropped him off
to go under his favorite Oregon freeway bridge,
“except sometimes in winter I worry about losing my toes.”

I know a preacher who regularly sits among them
rarely preaching Jesus, because he often finds Him there,
but instead buys them cigarettes, gives clothes & pocket-money for cheap wine,
brings them food, or a tent when he knows they would use it
all to relieve pain, prays with them when they ask,
directs them to missions & shelters if they don’t know,
takes them to the emergency room if they need to go.

Rotarian’s in our midst, a few of them better than we,
when living a fast paced life in conceit..
some of them are insane, some of them thieves,
all have had something stolen,
many without learned skill of hygiene this
left behind with four walls of normal life,
they wheel on, on bikes, grocery carts in whining dull roar of traffic,
all of our pain and bliss is somehow connected,
moments of delirious uplifting sunshine
& anguished biting cold, moving south, a hitch-hike,
a protected end of a grain car
makes trek a possibility, peer passed on whispered knowledge
of the “best missions” with good food &
where they will not shame you

This past Christmas morning I saw two
in back of my motels’ outside wall, under eve, arms
& legs entwined for warmth,
but yet sparkling with frost,
asleep, on crisp north California December asphalt

I know another preacher who gives them clean socks
washes their feet.. if they will let him.. washes
them lovingly in warm water, & spreads
antibiotics over sores & soles
while he shares the Gospel…

I can no longer call them homeless,
these Rotarian who sometimes righteously rage at being killed
& destroyed beneath this crushing wheel.

Descent

she handed it to me
then I dunno,
how I did it—knew I shouldn’t
but I just sliced me a slice
of fruit w/ the ol’ barlow knife
while I was looking at a coiled up snake,
who’d been talking to my woman,

& then first thing I know,
I was making moonshine
Skip & go naked foolin’ round til waay
after midnight every-night
everything seemed clear for a while,
but trouble was I ended up havin’-to-get-a-job, plus
plow the farm & then the woman left
& I had to take care of the kids too,
& keepin’ the house from fallen apart..

no more huntn’ & fishin’
just makin’ mortgage payments
for a farm I was given free and clear
long ago before the bank was even a notion

seems like there was a time
when there was just the plants & animals
& clear blue sky, white clouds
& the low and high blue flint hills
& the woman had really just been apart of me
that couldn’t no more leave
than I could say anything bad about anything
& hav’n kids didn’t involve them growing up
& killing each other
& back then I don’t ever remember
screaming in the middle of the night either….

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.

Not so, Sad Song

Long skinny
poems with
two word
Lines, long
skinny women
w/legs entwined

Young hippie
mamma’s w/
braided armpit
hair, became old
hippie mama’s
that just
don’t care

There was
a season
for both
& more,

Pill popper &
alcoholic’s duress,
living in bars but
under stress,

Long skinny
poems with
two word
lines, give it
up now

To narrative
tales, dressed w/
long skinny
women, gone
down wrong
roads white lines &
junkies sing
sad &
baleful songs

The River done
booked this
all away,
as flotsam &
downriver, & long gone
to stay

 

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