Posted on by EAT

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

Posted on by EAT

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

Posted on by EAT

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

Posted on by EAT

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.
Posted on by EAT

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.

Posted on by EAT

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.

Posted on by EAT

By Julia C. R. Dorr’s Grave

At the apex of my trip to Vermont I spent several days in Rutland, where I visited the grave of Julia Dorr. Later, as I reflected upon that visit, I drafted some thoughts that eventually became this poem. First the poem, then the story of how I found her grave.

By Julia C. R. Dorr’s Grave

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.

Friday night—well early Saturday morning—I rolled into Rutland, Vermont, after winding through various small roads of interest in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Pennsylvania, New York, and finally Vermont. This took me another three nights of camping and four days of driving. I’ll detail my route for this portion of my trip in a later post, mostly for myself because I know that later I’ll want to remember and reflect on it.

Saturday morning I washed my clothes, dressed decent, and set off to find the grave of one of my poet progenitors, Julia Dorr. This is the whole reason for my drive. At Evergreen Cemetery I parked my rental near the office just inside the front gate, planning on inquiring after the location of Julia’s plot. But the office was closed for the weekend. So I set off walking, through a city of rough-hewn final dwelling places. Shortly up the main road into the cemetery, it forks.

Though I felt her grave would be up the left fork, which went up through a series of vales into a heavily afforested area where the headstones literally disappeared from view among the trees, I chose the right fork, after some hesitation. My feeling was that she’d be up the left fork, but my feeling was also that I should walk up the right fork. Paradoxes like this can lead to moments of indecision that can just about split you in half and have each half hopping along its chosen fork.

A couple hundred feet up the right fork a man drove up behind me, and I turned to flag him down. He stopped and I ask him if he knows the cemetery well. He informed me that he is the current president of the cemetery, and that he knows it pretty well. I gave him Julia’s full name, “Julia Caroline Ripley Dorr”, and he instantly said, “Ah yes, the Ripleys. She’s buried up by General Ripley’s monument.” I vaguely recalled that she was related in some way, perhaps the daughter, of a General Ripley who was involved in the Civil War.

He then told me that he’s both the right person to come to, and the wrong person to ask, because he only remembers the general area of the cemetery owned by the Ripleys. He pointed me in the direction where he felt my search would yield some fruit (back down and up the left fork to a particular area) after giving me a name and number to call on if I failed to locate her grave.

He told me that he remembered the monument which was erected for the Ripleys in memory of the General as being a big monument. But I think it would have helped me considerably if he had remembered that it as the largest and most elaborate monument in the park. I assumed the “monument” was one of the many large family head stones, great big rectangular blocks, some fairly elaborate, that cast their shadows over a series of much smaller headstones. Most such ‘overstones’ had engraved upon them just a single name, the family name, while the smaller headstones had the full names of the dead along with their arrival and departure dates. Some of the smaller blocks were larger, and had one name with its arrival and departure dates carved upon it, while next to that name would be another—with only an entry date, waiting.

During my search I noticed this secluded twenty to twenty-five foot tall limestone monument up a hill and well into the trees, only visible from certain angles as I climbed about the hillsides checking the names on overstones and larger headstones. But I only went to look at it after I spent about two and a half hours looking everywhere else in the area the man had mentioned. I never would have guessed that this large monument would be the one.

It was possibly fifteen feet by fifteen feet, in the shape of a Greek cross, maybe five feet in height along its naves. From the transept rose a pillar into a pair of angel wings holding a globe, which faced the sunrise. On the face of each nave was carved the full names of the parents of a given branch of the Ripley family, and behind these, along the sides of the naves that faced the same direction were the full names of their children, with their arrival and departure dates below. The headstones themselves were small and uniform and had only the abbreviated names embossed atop them, nothing more. Julia’s plot lay beside her husband’s plot. At their feet were buried five of their children.

One thing that struck me as strange was that Julia’s grave was the only one over which the grass was slightly browned. Over the rest of the plots the grass was more uniform in color.

Posted on by EAT

A Strange Anticipation

One of the poets to reach me as a teen is buried near Rutland, Vermont. Not sure why I have this itch to visit her place of rest, and to walk by the home where she once lived. It’s been nagging at me for a few years now. On Wednesday I begin my long drive to the other coast, where I will pay my respects.

I think I’ll sing a couple of her poems by her plot.

A Strange Anticipation

How is it I feel the slight wind even now,
          almost breathing on my thoughts, and
the gentle green resistance of grass
          beneath my tennis shoes?

How is it I sense a partial shade
          across the hairs of my neck,
cast by the whispering arms of a fir
          planted long before my time?

How is it I see through surrounding trees
          small white clouds, folding in silent
contrast across clear blue depths, and there
          your weather beaten stone?

Though I have yet to pay my respects, I feel
          an approaching familiarity.
I don’t know what compels me to drive so far,
          just to stand by your grave.

Maybe I hope to find a touch of your presence,
          still lingering behind.
Or perhaps some small piece of inspiration,
          left twinkling in the grass.

Posted on by EAT

sunyata

A friend of mine, a scholar of Buddhism and traditional Chinese, has recently been talking about how ‘sunyata’ is grossly mistranslated into English and misunderstood in the West as ‘nothingness’, when the most accurate translation would be ‘evanescence’.

When he first mentioned this I thought to myself, “Well then, I guess that makes sense.” Everything about life and every moment has always seemed evaporative to me.

I didn’t quite know what the title of this would be when I started writing it, but about halfway through, ‘sunyata’ seemed like a perfect fit. Still feels like a perfect fit. So, my 23rd villanelle.

sunyata

fill with evanescent light
every momentary cell
coursed throughout imagined form

every vessel heart to limb
pulsing moments on to self
fill with evanescent light

illuminate each hidden fold
churning vapors through the soul
coursed throughout imagined form

every fiber bound to life
linking bone to skin be still
fill with evanescent light

elucidate this vital force
streaming like an endless swell
coursed throughout imagined form

every sorrow pain and fret
breathing mixed amid the silt
fill with evanescent light
coursed throughout imagined form

Posted on by EAT

Musing out loud

Been wanting to play more with imaginative poems that tell a story of some sort. So, here’s one. Going for the vague approach for the time being. I like vague. I like interpretable.

Musing out loud

I’ll wait for you here.
  I trust you’re not far.
          It was you who called me,
      after all.

I still remember.
  I lived in decay,
          the kind that can’t be overcome
      by strength or will.

In the cellar of broken dreams
  you shone your light
          and found me, emaciated,
      covered in cobwebs.

You left the old door open,
  standing just outside,
          and read out loud, so I could see
      stories in darkness.

Many seasons passed.
  But I finally emerged,
          lured to the sound
      of your lyric visions.

You placed one hand
  firm on my shoulder,
          and my knees nearly buckled
      from weakness.

You said, “Now you’ve come,
  emerged into light.
          And you’ll never return
      to the shadows.”

We walked.
  You talked of potential,
          of patience and study
      and time.

I listened.
  I watched the clouds climb
          where mountains reach out
      to the skies.

You talked of acceptance,
  the power of faith,
          a trust in the value
      of learning.

I listened,
  and built castles of sand
          and watched them return
      to the sea.

Then I suddenly saw it,
  the long steady path
          you had been hinting at
      with breadcrumb words.

It was covered in shrubs,
  weaves of poison oak,
          and the old fallen branches
      of deeply rooted tears.

And I found myself
  shifting the past years’ leaves
          beneath an uncertain tread
      of discovery.

Behind me I heard
  your soft-fallen feet
          hardly disturbing
      the settled breath of dew,

and the sound of your voice,
  naming the leaves,
          the blossoms, stones and creatures
      on the way.

And each had a story,
  of birth and being—
          the stones that weep dreams;
      the earthquake birth of ravens;

the old madrone
  who clothed the fox with her bark
          so he would not be cold;
      the star that seeded lilies.

And each was a marvel,
  a touch of understanding,
          a fresh new flash of light
      in my soul.

We came to a cabin,
  moons along the way,
          filled with lost ideas
      and empty pages.

I lit the candles,
  read beneath the darkness,
          and penciled meditations,
      brief as lake-borne mist.

Collecting berries,
  I played with long dead lyrics,
          reciting little moments
      to the wind.

One day you told me,
  “This time is yours.
          You can never really own it
      while I remain.”

And so you left,
  assuring you’ll return
          when one day I am ready
      to skim the stars.

Posted on by EAT

Presence

Sometimes it seems as if the unit I keep watch over at night is in some way haunted. There are so many times I would see something move toward me down the long dark hall—something there and yet not there, tangible and yet intangible—only to watch it dissipate back into nothing once it reached the cone of light cast from the bathroom.

The kids, asleep in their rooms, would stir as it moved past. And once in awhile it would dip into a doorway, followed a moment later by an anguished cry from the child that sleeps there. I would go down to look, only to find the child sound asleep and nothing else, save a strange cold sensation in the air.

Presence

A shadow slips
      from the corner of my mind
   beneath a random lintel
joined with darkness

A muffled sob
      stirs beneath gray sheets
   as walls absorb
the thuds of restless sleep

The shadow blurs
      across the long dark hall
   and slides between
the jambs of dreamless rest

A long strained moan
      struggles from the gloom
   and crawls half noticed
toward faded shades of light

The shadow flickers
      dust from mothen wings
   into the hollows
of one more dusky room

A sudden holler
      echoes down the hall
   a broken sorrow
cursed into the night

The shadow rustles
      like shaken autumn leaves
   into the twilight
waking in the east