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morning prayer

Every morning she prays her rosary. Although I am in no way religious, being present and in some way a part of the process can bring a certain peace to the moment and even a sense of hope to the day ahead.

morning prayer

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general. However, the above player can still be used to listen to it.
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Maya

This was originally going to be at least a portion of part I for “Contrast”, but after several months it never progressed. So I decided to call it its own poem and start over with the former.

Maya

From hard hidden folds where granites press
stony drops through limestone crevices
to streams that coalesce in emptiness
and pool in caverns dripping far from sight
to canyon narrows carved from monuments
heft high above a universe of waves
to stillborn depths where ancient forms of life
move like starving ghosts amid the void
she creeps through time an ever present force
birthing shapes amorphous to the mind
which rise and bubble out into the light
manifest for moments on the wind

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The Poet Obscure

I used to prepare and send as many as sixteen submissions a month. But after a few years worth of rejection slips, save for the acceptance of two or three poems in chapbook journals, I now rarely submit my work. If I saw poetry of some quality getting published, I might strive to improve upon it and continue submitting. But most published poetry could have been written by pretty much anyone. There’s nothing to set it apart. And the few poems that stand out above these aren’t much above. Still, for my own sake, I strive to improve my craft. This is what a student, a devotee, a child, a creature of poetry must do.

My guess is you have to know the editors personally, or at least know someone they know, to get your poetry published. And if not this, then at the very least I imagine you must have to overtly buy into whatever politics and agendas they’re selling—and your submissions must demonstrate as much. Whatever the case, the quality of work doesn’t seem matter, so long as it fits snugly within a predetermined socio-political paradigm.

Knowing this, I still go my own way. Either I go my own way, alone and unknown, yet scaling heights of beauty and insight, or I trample along through the plains as just another brown hump in the stampede.

The Poet Obscure

He may not have the gift of high allusion,
quotes and references to texts obscure
recorded with compulsory profusion.

Perhaps he’d rather find a natural scheme
where words and metaphors come more sincerely,
requiring no exegetic scrawl.

He may not use strong images so nearly
as often as the modernists demand
is vital for a poem to be clearly

more than just a monologue of mind,
for he’ll make use of other strong devices
that let him deftly transmit all he means.

He may not ramble on of sacrifices
he’s made throughout the years, and what he feels
the world should know of all his strengths and vices.

He might instead decide he’d rather fold
his tales and meditations in the hearses
of dead and dying tenors to the fields.

He may not give his all enjambing verses
haphazardly across each random page,
every line chopped as he disperses

strong opinion, malcontent and pain,
for he may see the line bearing notions
beyond the norms imposed by donnish pride.

He may not feel romanced by Greek devotions
nor feel inclined to scatter Roman lore
throughout the lexicon of his emotions.

A broader range of histories may lure
his thought to ponder cultural connections
rooted in the loam of distant lives.

He may not share the common predilections
of using poetry as but a means
to push his politics in all directions

and further what agendas rule his mind,
for he may have no motive but to travel
through landscapes green with self-development.

He may not heed the rap of fashion’s gavel
and follow every statute set by fad,
accepting precedents as laid in gravel.

He might be more inclined to stray afar
from sooty highways, trampled by convention,
on subtle paths that lead to mystic finds.

He may not raise his hackles at the mention
of making use of meter, maybe rhyme,
filled with indignation, rage and tension

to think on prosody, semantic rules,
for he may sense mysterious potential
swelling deep beneath that censured realm,

waiting to be seen as quintessential
to evolutions ever influential.

This is my third terza rima. I’ve used disyllabic rhyme for one weave of the scheme, and end-line alliteration for the other. Each line is a pentameter. Seems to work.

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A Christmas Poem

On Christmas Eve I decided to go for walk in the Montgomery Woods, near where I live. I planned it around what I figured would be the sun’s nadir, so I got there about 11:20pm, and my walk lasted about two and a half hours. I brought my most weather resistant bansuri flute, knowing it would hold up to the cold, and still be playable the next day. When I go on my night walks there, I walk the full three mile loop through the groves, and not just the half-mile out to the first grove of the woods and back.

It was worth it, and I discovered I can play Noel on the flute I brought with me.

A Christmas Poem

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

It is a dense forest full of towering redwoods, tan oaks, and underbrush—especially blankets of head-high fern. In the night it can be especially mysterious to walk through. When its a full moon, which it very nearly was, this mysteriousness is made all the more fantastic, almost eldritch. I use a small headlamp, not always strapped to my head, when I go on my night walks. More than adequate to see where I’m going and to keep visually aware of what’s around me. Sometimes I’ll take nearly the entire walk with it turned off, using it only to get by a few rough spots. But this time I had it on nearly the entire way. The cold somehow confuses my sense of surrounding, numbs it to a certain extent, making me feel more comfortable with it kept on.

When I first began taking these night walks a few years ago, I was very fretful, constantly snapping my head about at every slight sound or perceived motion, every unusual shadow, stopping to listen and be sure there wasn’t something near or following. And in these woods every shadow seems entirely alive. But these days I’m a lot more comfortable, and I’ve come to have a much better trust of my sense of what’s around me. Sometimes I do encounter animals out there, but they’re often a good deal less sure of me than I am of them. The last time I was out there I was serenaded by what sounded like a handful of wolves, baying from the woods nearby and nearby ridge-tops. They didn’t sound entirely like wolves, however, so I’m not sure what I heard. Yet I wasn’t very spooked by the experience, more just curious and interested.

This was my first walk in these woods during the winter. I’ve tended to not go on night walks during the winter because of the cold and wet. But I wanted to do something special for Christmas Eve, something that wasn’t exactly Christmassy, yet personally meaningful. So I took my flute and had my first Christmas night musical nature walk.

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End

Yes, the end. The end of a life-altering journey by road to the East Coast. The end of a pilgrimage to pay my respects at the home and at the final resting place of a poet who touched my heart from over 100 years beyond her grave. The end of a trek that walked me past a whisper telling me there was something still ahead, something still to look forward to. The end. And here it is, the End.

End

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

Well, I left Rutland, VT around 2pm on Wednesday the 15th, heading west on Hwy 4/SR (State Route) 4A through Whitehall into New York to SR 22, where I headed north through Ticonderoga to SR 74, west to I 87, north to SR 84, also called Blue Ridge Road, west to SR 28N, also called Roosevelt-Marcy Trail, west again through Long Lake and south on SR 28N/SR 30 through Blue Mountain Lake to SR 28 west through Inlet to Limekiln Lake Road, south to a State Park Campground at Limekiln Lake, where I spent the night. Limekiln Lake is in the southwest quadrant the beautiful Adirondack mountains.

On waking up I continued west on SR 28 to SR 12, south to I 90, west to I 481, south to I 81, south through Cortland to SR 13, southwest to a delightful little city called Ithaca, NY, which is situated on southern shore of the miles long Seneca Lake. Here I found an unbelievably cool coffee house and hung out there the rest of the day. At around sunset I got back in my rental and continued southwest on SR 13 to I 86, west to Hwy 15, and south into Pennsylvania to Mansfield, where I pulled off to sleep in the back seat for a couple hours.

Around midnight I continued south to Hwy 220 at Williamsport, and southwest to I 80, and west into Ohio to I 76. Somewhere along 76 I pulled off just before dawn and slept in the back seat for about eight hours, waking up just before noon. Realizing how long I slept when I awoke, I bolted west on I 76 to I 71, and southwest to I 70 via I 270, which skirts Columbus, OH. And now, finally on I 70, I shot west into Indiana to Hwy 27 at Richmond, and south about 30 miles through Liberty to SR 101, and a couple more miles south to Whitewater Memorial State Park, where I camped the night.

Upon waking up the next morning, I got myself together and got back out to SR 101 and headed south a bit to W Dunlapsville Road, which I guessed, and correctly, would take me across the northern end of the nearby Brooksville Lake. However, on the west side of the lake the road was closed, and I followed a scattering of “Detour” signs, starting at S Hubble Road, north and then west to S Mt. Pleasant Road (I never noticed a mountain out there), north to SR 44, which is a road I knew what to do with. On SR 44 I went west through Connersville to SR 1, and north through a series of townships back to I 70, and west through a strange place called Indianapolis to I 74 via I 65 north and I 465 south. On I 74 I went west into Illinois through Champaign to I 72, west through Springfield to Jacksonville, where I stopped for a sandwich. From here I decided on going north BR (Business Route) Hwy 67 through Jacksonville to SR 104, and west to a little one lane road called E 2873rd Lane, north about three handfuls of miles to Siloam Springs State Park, where I found a good campsite and pitched my tent for the night after taking a walk down by the state park’s Crabapple Lake with my bansuri.

In the morning I woke and continued north on E 2873rd Lane to N 1200th Ave, and west back to SR 104, west through Quincy to Hwy 24, west over the Mississippi into Missouri to SR 6, west clear across Missouri through a scattering of small towns into St. Joseph, where I washed my clothes and watched a movie, “Stardust”, before finding Hwy 36 in the night and continuing west over the Missouri River into Kansas, and west on Hwy 36 to a little town called Washington, where I spent the night at a motel.

I woke up late the following morning, around 10am, and stayed on Hwy 36 west the whole day into Colorado. Just inside Colorado I went south on Hwy 385 to Bonny State Park to pitch an early tent and relax for the rest of the evening. What really struck me as unusual about this park is that you couldn’t tell once you were in the park that you were literally surrounded on all side by countless miles of corn fields. The water from the tap, however, smelled just like turpentine. I drank probably a gallon of this funny water during the evening and following morning.

I woke at about sunrise and went back up Hwy 385 to Hwy 36, and west to merge with I 70, west through Denver up into the Rockies to Frisco, where I found a coffee house and stopped for a bit to eat. From here I continued west and magically became very weak, dizzy, and feverish by the time I reached Riffle, where I pulled off and found a motel. When I checked in they could see I was in terrible shape and they tried to talk me into going to the ER instead of checking in, but I told them I’d rather die debt free than live the rest of my life in debt to a for profit medical industry. This sobered the man at the counter and he checked me in and had a friend of his who worked there help me up to my room, where I crawled into bed and watched my mind wander through fever delirium and sort of accepted the potential of dying during the night. Around dusk the man who helped me to my room showed back up with Gatorade, Ibuprofen, and Aspirin, all of which I gratefully accepted. During the night the fever broke into a soppy sweat, and by morning I was more or less back to myself.

Marveling at my survival, I continued west on I 70 into Utah through Salina to Hwy 50, which I stayed on all the way through Utah into Nevada. Just inside Nevada I went south on SR 487 a few miles to Great Basin National Park, where I drove up to a campsite nearly 11k feet up, where I went on a four mile hike before setting up my tent. During my walk I met a couple, who asked me about a good place in the redwoods along the coast to visit. I told them about Usal Beach, north of where I live in Mendocino County, and mentioned I wrote a poem inspired by a grove of redwoods near there. They wanted to hear the poem so I grabbed it and a bunch of other poems of mine after I set up camp and spent the evening at their campsite reading to them, which they really seemed to enjoy.

The following morning I woke near sunrise, packed up, and went for about a 7 mile hike round trip up to a population of bristlecone pine trees. Upon returning to my rental I headed back to Hwy 50 and took it all the way west to I 80 at Fernley, and west to a friend’s in Reno, arriving around 11pm. The following morning I returned the rental.

I stayed three nights at my friend’s before heading back home to Ukiah, CA, a five hours drive from Reno.

So now I’m home and tomorrow night my vacation ends proper.

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Perfect Silence

The same night after I posted “note to soul mate“, I camped at the Mondeaux Flowage, a lake in Wisconsin. This involved some driving around on a web of dirt roads at dusk. The first campground I located happened to be a group campground—that was completely unoccupied that night. This poem attempts to depict, or express, a sort of “perfect silence” I had experienced at this location into the evening and during the night there.

Perfect Silence

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general. However, the above player can still be used to listen to it.

Speaking of driving around, I wanted to detail the route I took from Paynesville, MN to Rutland, VT:

When I left Paynesville, MN I continued northeast on SR (State Route) 23 through St. Cloud to SR 95, then east to North Branch, where I stopped at a Quizno’s to have a sandwich while rush hour traffic died down a bit. Then I got back on SR 95 east through Taylors Falls to Hwy 8. A half mile east of the junction I crossed over the St. Croix River, a tributary to the Mississippi, into Wisconsin. This was the day before the bridge collapse 50 to 70 miles south in Minneapolis.

In St. Croix, WI, I stopped at a gas station and fell asleep in the car for about an hour. When I woke up I looked at my maps and decided to try to get to a national forest south of Kennan about two hours east and look for a decent place to camp there. After filling up my many water bottles I got back on Hwy 8 east to CR (County Road) N at Kennan, south to CR D, east to CR E, and south about four miles to a series of dirt roads, starting with NF (National Forest Road) 102 east past a few forks to NF 106, north to a paved drop down to Picnic Point, the group campground I mentioned above.

At first light I woke, packed up, and intuitively found my way straight to CR D north of the lake, bypassing the need to return first back to CR E. This involved driving NF 106 north along the lake to NF 333, north to rejoin NF 106 again, north then east over to NF 104, and north up to CR D. This didn’t take very long. Less than a half hour.

On CR D I went east through Westboro to SR 13, north to Prentice at Hwy 8, east through Laona to SR 32, then south to a privately owned campground where I inquired after the cost of a shower.

I must have felt pretty spunky because of the shower, because instead of taking the route I had originally planned on of SR 32 south to SR 64 east through Marinette on the border of Michigan and north on SR 35 up to Hwy 2 and on east, I spun on luck and found myself zipping along a bunch of unpredictably narrow roads. At a town called Mountain (the Midwesterners who named this town had no idea what a mountain is), I went east on CR W to CR A, north on CR A to merge seamlessly with CR C, and north still to CR V, then east to HWY 141 at Amberg.

From Amberg I went north to another county road, CR Z, east across the Mississippi, which was practically a creek that far north, into Michigan, where it ceased to be CR Z and turned into CR G18, east through Carney to Hwy 41, and north to Powers, where I stopped for a sandwich before continuing north a touch to Hwy 2. On Hwy 2 I went a long stretch east along Lake Michigan to St. Ignace, where I stopped for dinner.

Here I decided I would drive across the “Mighty Mac”, the Mackinac Bridge that crosses the gap between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, and west along Lake Michigan to Wilderness State Park, where I’d camp for the night. So, groggy from a full day of driving, I went south on I 75 over the “Mighty Mac”, which I think may be an exact clone of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, but painted green and white, to SR 81, east to merge with Wilderness Park Drive into Wilderness State Park to the registration booth.

When I discovered they wanted $36 dollars for a night in a tent, I changed my mind and headed back west on Wilderness Park Drive to SR 81, then south to E Gill Road, east to Hwy 31, and south to Brutus Road, where I saw a sign that said “State Campground” pointing east.

I decided to check it out and went east on Brutus to Maple Bay Road, after passing it and coming back, to find the campground a few miles south. It was pretty well packed, and I was in one of my grumpy indecisive moods. I almost stayed, but for some reason decided to drive all night. So I got back to Hwy 31 and continued south to SR 68, which took me east to I 75 at Indian River.

During the night I drove south on I 75, stopping at rest stops along the way to try and get some rest. This proved to be impossible because it was too hot and humid with the windows up, and when I put the windows down for air mosquitoes swarmed in after my blood. So I ended up driving south on I 75 through Flint to Hwy 23, south to a rest stop near Milan, where I finally managed a couple hours of sleep because it cooled off enough during the night for me to get a few hours sleep with the windows up just before sunrise.

When I woke I continued south on Hwy 23 into Iowa and through Toledo to merge with I 475, south and east on I 475 around the south end of Toledo to merge with I 75, and north a touch on I 75 to Hwy 20. Then east to Fremont through a handful of busy townships, where I stopped at a Denny’s for something to eat.

From here I went northeast on Hwy 6 to SR 2, which was a freeway, east one exit to SR 101, which was not, north into Sandusky to Hwy 6 again, and clear through every possible part of Sandusky east to just before Rye Beach, where it dawned on me the freeway SR 2 and the township hopping road Hwy 6 go in the same direction through the same places. So I got on SR 2 and headed east to merge with I 90 and through Cleveland, where there was a six or so car pile-up, to SR 91, north a mile or two back to Hwy 6, east through several townships and stoplights to All Souls Cemetery, where Nikki, a girl who committed suicide a few years back, is buried.

Ever since I planned to make my trip to Vermont I also planned on visiting Nikki’s grave along the way. I never knew Nikki, but her mother has followed my writing for a long time. About a year after Nikki’s suicide she asked me to write a poem in memory of her daughter after she saw “Unbounded”, a poem I wrote in memory of Art Bell’s (the original radio host for Coast to Coast AM) wife, who died suddenly of a heart attack while they were on vacation. I honored her request, which became a journey for me, and over five weeks wrote a poem I titled “The Dimming”, which she and her whole family loved. My process with writing that poem brought me to feel a tremendous empathy for Nikki and her family.

While at the cemetery a thunder storm rolled by a little to the south east, spattering some rain, but not so much that I couldn’t evade it by ducking beneath a black oak which grew near the head of Nikki’s grave. I hung out there playing my bansuri and wishing her spirit well for probably 45 minutes, until the storm had passed. There was something fitting about such a the storm at just that time, thunder crashing around my ears, lighting startling earth and sky.

From here I continued east on Hwy 6, feeling both uplifted and melancholy, through Andover onto SR 85 to Pymatuning Lake Road, south to a campground near the southwest end of Pymatuning Reservoir, which is split down the middle by the Iowa-Pennsylvania border.

I ended up sleeping in next morning and when I awoke, right at 11:11am on the dot, I packed everything up and got back on SR 85 east into Pennsylvania, where it turns into SR 285, east to Hwy 6 again at Conneaut Lake, east through Meadville to SR 77, northeast through Corry to SR 426, east to SR 27 at Garland, east to Hwy 6 again at Pittsfield, east through Warren to SR 59, east to 770 at Marshburg, east to Hwy 219, north to SR 346, east through Derrick City and on to SR 446, north into New York where it turned into SR 305 on to SR 417, north finally to I 86/Hwy 17, where I shot east through Binghamton to I 88, east still on cruise control to Hwy 7, just shy of the I 90 turnpike, where I’d have to pay some toll.

Now it was dark, and I meandered through Albany and a crap-load of suburbs into Vermont, and finally up to Rutland. I managed Rutland around 1:30am, where I got a room at the Travel Inn at the north end of town.

Whew!

I recorded all that for my own records because I know I’ll come back to print it up as people ask me the route I took during my trip. If you’re so inclined, this entire route can be traced through Google Maps, starting here.

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Perfect Moments

My first terza rima. So far as I know, terza rimas aren’t generally divided into parts like this, but the end-line scheme does follow the aba, bcb, …, yzy, zz format. However, I’m using end-line alliteration here instead of end-line rhyme. Is that wrong?

Perfect Moments

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

Also the lines are all pretty much perfect pentameters. I haven’t cared too much whether or not they started off with a soft foot. So it’s a mix of iambic and trochaic pentameters, strictly speaking.

What inspired this? Well my ex-intimate creature talked of these “perfect moments”, and claimed to have had more of them during her time spent with me than she had known over the course of her life. Well, I liked the idea and wanted to explore it. So I’ve thought back through the time we spent together and tried to figure out where and when she could have had these perfect moments, and to capture some of them—hopefully all—as best I could.

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prayer

There is a little dirt road called Low Gap Road that winds into the hills west of Ukiah to the ocean. Not long after I moved into the Ukiah area to work for REBOL Technologies in ’99, I found myself exploring this road looking for a place pray.

prayer

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

Ever since I was a runaway, as I went through my various spiritual-religious phases, I would seek out remote places in the mountains to pray. Prayer has had many meanings to me throughout my life. It began with pleas for my safety and well-being and migrated steadily toward seeking out understanding, sanity, peace of mind, and stillness of spirit. Mixed throughout have been requests for others who have touched my life. Ever present has been a desire to seek out god’s will for me, and the power to carry that out—a lasting echo from my teen and adult exposure to 12-step rooms and precepts.

Throughout my life, while praying in the night, it has been rare that I would do so without seeing a shooting star. I can remember when this began. I was still 15, and not long on my own as a runaway. One night on the top of a mesa near Kingman, Arizona, I made ready to sleep and found myself completely overwhelmed by anxiety and hunger. It was cold, and through the little round breathing hole of my sleeping bag I peered up at the stars and cried, praying. The moment I told the stars that I just wanted to know that everything would somehow be okay, a star fell across the length of my field of vision. I can still remember the sudden calm that practically tingled in my limbs. And an instant faith. A faith I have never lost.

This is how my hilltop prayers began.

I had a friend who worked as the head librarian at Mendocino College, the community college just north of Ukiah, who was dying of colon cancer. She was a quiet yet powerful influence on my life, in ways I don’t quite understand, but in ways I can say with certainty inspired me to go the direction I went with studying and writing poetry long term.

One night at this place of prayer on Low Gap Road I asked for her to be healed, and just as I finished asking two shooting stars, bright with long arching trails, shot across the night just in front of me, horizon to horizon, one above the another. I must have misinterpreted this response because about a year later my friend lost her battle with the cancer. My own father’s death never struck me with such savage pangs of loss.

After her passing in 2002 I visited my place of prayer I think once more, and then all but forgot about it. And since then to now I have not sought out another place for prayer.

A few nights ago I remembered Low Gap Road, suddenly, as if a voice just whispered it into my thoughts. And I found myself filled with ambivalence at the thought of returning for a visit.

I decided to go. And once there just stood silent—for over an hour—playing my bansuri flute in the night. Finally I folded my arms across my chest and looked up at the night and found myself saying, “I guess I feel betrayed.” And went back to playing my flute.

A while later as I played, I turned to look west at the risen moon, and just then a shooting star fell toward the north.

I don’t claim to understand any of this. But this poem, my 23rd terzanelle, was inspired by my reflections on it all.

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moods

My 128th ghazal, inspired by a woman with deep brown eyes.

moods

a clarity settles deep in her soft amber eyes
and peace wells up from nearly fathomless eyes

adventure lures the heart to the mystery
of sidelong glances cast from her earthen eyes

imagination paves her path with promise
where patience lightly walks with brownstone eyes

hope found refuge under the feathery green
of one long look into her mahogany eyes

she cheers the sunbathed home of inspiration
with a glittering veneer of cherry-wood eyes

love tastes of strawberry kisses beneath dark curls
coated with the cream of her dark chocolate eyes

compassion sways against the sprawling skies
praying up to the stars with terrestrial eyes

Instead of qafiya, or that species of rhyme that occurs just before the radif (refrain), I used words loosely hyponymous with the color brown for an associative parallelism.

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spires

A ghazal! I haven’t written a ghazal since June of 2005. So that makes this—what?—my 127th. Feels nice to get one out again. I remember I got real tired of them by the end of my ghazal project a few years ago, but I never really intended to abandon them altogether.

With this one I veer away from using my penname in the signature couplet (last couplet) to using a reference to one of my penname’s meanings. In this poem it’s “open skies”, since “vast openness to the heavens” is one of the Arabic meanings for ‘Zahhar’.

spires

let’s twine our roots beneath the world together
until we rise against the wind together

let’s turn and reach to gather shades of light
with countless long thin leaves that wave together

let’s make a bed beneath our outstretched limbs
shaded by the dreams we weave together

let’s draw clear waters from the hidden earth
and breathe them out as vapors washed together

let’s share the sounds of creeks and faint cicadas
their rhythmic songs like magic wound together

let’s shelter soft brown trails among the fern
where lovers holding hands may walk together

let’s filter daylight from the open skies
through daydreams spun like amber webs together

Publication History:

Art Arena (web-based) — March 2007

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Spillway

Lake Mendocino, a reservoir lake, is a few miles north of Ukiah. The lake serves multiple purposes, among which are water storage for civic and agricultural uses, hydroelectric power for the City of Ukiah, and water-sport recreation for the region’s inhabitants.

About a two mile’s walk southeast of the dam there is a broad spillway that has been cut right through a tall hillside, effectively turning one peak into two. I have found that if I play my flute at the concrete lip of the spillway, the side furthest from the lake, I can create an orchestra of reverberating echoes. The effect is often stunning and mesmerizing.

This is my 22nd villanelle.

Spillway

Amid the ghostlike skeletons of oaks,
a lone song lifts from a channel brown with grass
and echoes up to join dissevered peaks.

Whispers lap the edge of a mountain lake
nestled in a valley, smooth as glass,
amid the ghostlike skeletons of oaks.

Wind shimmers through the chambers of a reed,
resonates across a manmade vale,
and echoes up to join dissevered peaks.

Frogs concealed in rip-rap greet the dusk;
a pair of small birds chase each other’s tails
amid the ghostlike skeletons of oaks.

A raven drops clear pebbles off its beak,
a sound that ripples lightly through the air
and echoes up to join dissevered peaks.

The lone song dims to silence. In its wake
a gentle quiet settles with the dark
amid the ghostlike skeletons of oaks
and echoes up to join dissevered peaks.