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strobe

Reflecting on the nature of existence again. It’s not like I try to solve the great mystery of being when I reflect on just what our experience of existence is and where it comes from. Nothing like that. When I reflect, it’s usually because I suddenly had an insight, and I find myself meditating upon it. For me, such insights tend to revolve around the coalescence of being rather than on the nature of being itself. Perhaps in time these insights will lead somewhere, so long as I’m careful not to over-think them and just let them be what they are—insights, pure and simple.

strobe

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.

As for the coalescence of being. It seems to me that the process would be a cycle of coalescence and disintegration (birth and death) with no real beginning and no real ending.

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deja vu

The first poems I read and enjoyed as a child were in the form of stories. Such poems are the whole reason for my taking an interest in poetry myself—poems like “The Dreamer” by Robert Service, “The Legend of the Organ Builder” by Julia Dorr, and “The Last Man” by Thomas Campbell. And it’s strange, since I rarely approach poetry from the angle of storytelling. I’m not sure why this is. As a teenager I tried my hand at short and verse stories, and most of those who read said they enjoyed them and were encouraging.

Over the past seven years I’ve written only a handful of poems that tell some kind of story. Most of them have ended up as meditations or reflections of one kind or another. But writing stories in verse and free verse form has and continues to be a goal of mine as a poet. Maybe I’ve just lacked the courage to try, fearing discouragement. Or maybe I find it more difficult than I used to to come up with ideas, or at least to trust my ideas as they come.

So I’ve decided to trust one and see how it turned out.

deja vu

i’ve been here before
at the foot of this mountain
watching the cranes glide down

there were restless sounds
hissing sharp through the air
forged echoes clanging
a tireless struggle

the lake wimpled bits of sun
thin pines stood breathing by
silent ever solemn silent watch

by the shore gleamed
relentless thrusts and parries
the flash of teeth
whirling plates of armor

no words were spoken
only glances gauging glance
meditating malice and survival

hidden in the branches
robins sang responses to the song
of steel played out on steel
from one high limb a squirrel barked alarm

minutes passed
or was it hours that pushed shadows
slowly through the woods

i remember still
that long pained grunt a gasp that
echoed all the woods to hush
a long loud rolling peel of silence

sudden tears that stung the cheeks
and fell to wet blood spattered lips
a frozen smile pointed to the clouds

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reflections

Another meditation on the nature of self, something I’ve wondered and asked questions about since childhood.

reflections

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.
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promise

During my trip to Vermont in July/August, I visited the Devil’s Tower, where I had an experience that changed not only the course of my life, but the shape of my past. The details of this experience will remain with me, within me, to be buried with my bones and passed only to the heart of what posterity visits my grave. I will pass it then, the whole promise of it, one All Soul’s Eve, and so will the Promised.

For even then will we be side by side.

promise

from the moment i looked up and saw
just over my head your memory
draped off the stub remains of
a ponderosa’s lower branch

from the moment i felt lightning flash
through my mortal form till numb
my fingers tingled the beginnings of
an electric understanding

from the moment my eyes took in
the simple shape of your past hung
to the south of the bear-scratched tower
bleached white with unshed tears

from the moment i realized i stood
where grief-struck eyes set your spirit free
held hands and prayed for your hope
overlooking a plain of creeping thunder

from the moment you reached out and touched
my song with hidden fingers and embraced
my heart my mind my long forgotten dreams
with all the love you gave in life

oh my god i knew you then clear
as the cobalt sky that shook over dark
rumbling clouds suspended far
far in the distance

and from that moment i’ve carried
the shimmering whisper of your ghost in my
bones my joints my manhood like a promise
tangible as the stars themselves

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loam

What would I miss the most about the West Coast should I move away and make my home elsewhere? The redwoods. The tall stands of old growth redwoods that no camera or photographer can do a moment’s justice. I’ve gotten to know these trees over the past several years, and have connected with them in ways not easily expressed. They feel like friends, close friends. The tall drafty halls feel like the house my spirit has lived in for a million years.

loam

will your long slender roots
reach down and tickle my
thoughts through four
billion years of magma

will the call of an owl echo
from your chambered halls
and skim the cloudscapes
to my faraway ears

will your deep green needles
cast just enough fragrance
to refresh my memory
from the far side of the earth

will i see in the highest vapors
reflected off ice crystals the
faintest reflection of
your topmost branches

i will return to haunt you
to touch your red-brown bark
sit by your fountains and
sing to your leaves

if it be only my ghost
i will come again and drift
like drizzle through the scent
of your ancient gloom

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Gleam

You won’t guess it. You won’t conceptualize it. You won’t expect it. You won’t doubt or be convinced of it. You won’t have any idea it even existed. But, suddenly it may be upon you, and in that moment you will realize it was always there—that you were never apart from it for an instant.

Gleam

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.
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Projections

This might go some small distance to answer a question posed concerning my previous post, “Ode for Joy“.

Projections

We are small yellow suns
suspended together in space
plasmic arms entangled
in mutual relativity

Our avatars roam galaxies
seeking to see touch share
what momentary forms we
manifest in the tracts of time
remembering if but a sense
of our ancient dance

For how long have we caressed
our tandem orbits bathed
in the other’s light
For how long have we warmed the face
of myriad worlds and moons spun
round the plane of our equator

Here on a rock called Earth
warmed by a kindred’s rays
we have met once again
to joy in the spectral hues
we have loved an eternity

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ice

I have a commitment to myself to write about writer’s block itself if ever I feel it coming on. This way I’ll still have something to write about.

ice

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.
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Solitude

During my week in the Yolla Bolly Wilderness last month I encountered a stillness of mind and peace of spirit unlike I’ve ever experienced before. I’ve only twice before gone more than three days without coming across another human being, both of which were on the Yukon River. And I found these two experiences extremely disconcerting. Clearly I wasn’t ready to make peace with Solitude.

To make peace with her I’ve had to—not reconcile myself to a life without intimate companionship—but accept that it’s a very real possibility. Accept that maybe it’s not the most important thing in my life, not so essential to my health and wellbeing. And when I met Solitude a third time in the wilderness, this time backpacking, I found her not so repulsive, not so unfriendly. In fact, I found her energy quite feminine in nature, and comforting, accepting.

Solitude

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.

This poem has taken me a month to write because I felt it so important to take my “self” completely out of the poem, and to make only pronominal references to Solitude herself. This stretched me to find other ways of wording a journey and expressing the development of a closeness between the spirits of two beings, one an embodied entity, the other an immaterial principle.

Poems like this represent what I strive toward as an animist poet.

Publication History:

Clamor — Fall 2009

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contrition

There are many reasons behind an individual’s behaviors. We are complex creatures, conditioned by complex histories. So complex, in fact, that we rarely understand ourselves what motivates us. But it is worthwhile to try to gain insight into and an understanding of those motivations. These insights and understandings can guide a process of change and personal growth, and an honest contrition for past behaviors that may have caused harm to others, and ourselves.

contrition

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.
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In Yolla Bolly

There is a wilderness area in California near Ukiah, where I live, called Yolla Bolly Wilderness. Most locals have no idea it exists. It’s a pristine wilderness, never logged. And roads have never been cut into the region. The trails are only scarcely maintained due to budget cuts, which actually increases the appeal of the park by large degrees, making it feel the more wild, natural, and untouched.

In Yolla Bolly

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.

I spent six days backpacking solo there from Sep 7th to the 12th, just three weeks after a lightning storm blew through and set 17 fires ablaze. All but three of these were out when my walk began. Two of the three were as yet uncontained, but the third was expected to be all the way out soon. The uncontained fires burned about 15 miles north by northeast and 10 miles northeast of my trailhead. I had an informative chat with the fire chief in person about the fires before going out, and he assured me that the area of the park I planned to visit would be safe for backpacking. I carried with me a map of the locations of the active and recently active fires, so I was able to avoid them all.

This is the first time I’ve backpacked solo more than three nights, and the second time I’ve backpacked solo at all. To my surprise I didn’t come across a single person during my six day walk. But this was a welcome surprise. A very welcome surprise.

As I walked I sometimes found myself reflecting on my experiences backpacking with others and my observations of those I’ve come across in the backcountry. Everyone I’ve backpacked with or come across has always been filled with a blustering impatience, stressed to be here and there or do this and that during their hikes. Their thoughts were full of highest places, longest treks, conquering some aspect of the wilderness, themselves, or both. Then I thought of the loggers, hunters, rafters, and how it seems that anyone who comes to the wilderness comes not to commune with her, but to conquer some aspect of her nature, to take home a trophy.

It was nice to walk alone, at my own pace and in harmony with my surroundings, rather than hike with others, trekking madly about, on the clock to be here and there, with hardly the time or energy left to notice where I was, where I’d been, what was around me. I found that upon returning from such hikes, I couldn’t remember one vivid detail of my experience, other than being in a rush, straining to my limits, and feeling like I had been roped and dragged by a pickup to a bone-splintering pulp.

This time I got to visit with the wilderness, get to know her a little, enjoy her company. The experience was, and continues to be in vivid memory, refreshing and harmonizing.

I welcome the conquerors to their ways, and to each other. But I have finally discovered mine, and something of myself.