Posted on by EAT

Glance

When I go backpacking, I tend to my bring my journal along, or at least a little composition book. Here I’ll record any thoughts I have, or poem fragments. I should do this more often, since it affords me an opportunity to really sit with my thoughts, undistracted. Later I’ll go through the poem fragments and see about expanding them into actual poems (though I’m told a poem fragment is usually itself a poem).

Of the five or so recorded during my recent eight day walk, this one feels the most complete.

Glance

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.
Posted on by EAT

cicada dreams

Once in awhile I’ll meet and interact with some small creature, and this will inspire a poem or three. I’ve attempted to interact with cicadas in the past, but they’re always so skittish, making it difficult even to get near one, never mind give one a ride. Maybe this one was a bit shocked by its downtown surroundings, making it more willing to try its luck with climbing on board. Which I think worked out well for it, since I was able to leave it someplace far more green.

cicada dreams

i

stained glass wings rest
light against the dull gray
tinge of stainless steel

    compound eyes study a world
    more strange and alien
    than their wide and varied view

  giant beetles rush colors past
  sometimes disgorging unwieldy
  young from beneath heavy wings

      great square hives rise up
      full of eyes that glint back bits
      of amber pearl and turquoise

    creatures half concealed by
    remains of cocoon rush about
    scratching out bits of song

        small metal trees grow barely
        a few flat leaves which never
        bend to the touch of wind

there is no need for thought
for there is nothing to understand
here of this dim new dreaming
 

ii

curious eyes reach out and
touch ever so slightly front-
most legs with invitation

        one rises up to ponder-feel
        the alien appendage almost
        lost in reflections of meaning

    then all at once tear-drop
    wings climb up light tan skin
    and over thin brown hairs

      one walks the other rides
      before the floating scrutiny of
      a large peculiar gaze

  overhead floats a sidewalk
  canopy of maples deep green
  firs and old black oaks

    sign posts and street lamps fade
    behind a backyard gate that leads
    into a garden where the sound

      of city streets is hardly heard
      among the many hues of spring
      that climb and blossom toward the sun

and here against a beechwood branch
living wings are gently placed
returned to sapwood realms of dream

Posted on by EAT

fallen

One of the old growth redwoods in Montgomery Woods has recently fallen. This state reserve is about a 30 minutes drive from the northwest side of Ukiah. I walk here with some regularity, including full moon walks, and I’ve come to know these trees in a way that’s difficult to express.

fallen

take what light i have to give
  my gentle friend

you are fallen splintered shattered
  scattered all upon the hill

take what hope i have to share
  for your rebirth

roots and limbs born out again
  as skyward green

your absence will be remembered long
  sung among the highest boughs
    from whence you fell

the ancient order of the wood
  will chant your transmigration through
    realms of rain and fog

take what light i have to give
  my heartwood friend

you are returned from whence you came
  drying slowly in the gloom

feel what hope i strive to spread
  throughout your broken form

find a place against the loam
  to spread your leaves again

Posted on by EAT

what is haiku

Though I don’t write many haiku, I do think I understand them. Quite well in fact, along with the tanka. Haiku and tanka represent a universal crowning point within the realm of poetry. And I firmly believe that he who takes the time to master haiku and/or tanka—not just “write” them en masse, anyone can do that—masters much of poetry itself.

In February 2005 someone asked me to write up an explanation of the haiku for her so she could write one. It seemed somehow counterproductive—wrong even—to explain the haiku using expository prose, so I offered the following.

what is haiku

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

rainsong

It’s been raining a lot lately. She tucks in the day with a giant gray comforter and lulls me to rest with persistent song. Since I work nights, this is welcome music.

rainsong

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

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.

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

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

Phases

My 2nd terza rima. I got the idea for this poem as I fell asleep in the mountains a little east of Wyoming’s Devil’s Tower. If anyone has ever been a true and constant companion throughout all the phases of my life, she would be the moon.

Ah, yes. The moon. The ever-present moon.

Phases

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

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.