Sunday, July 27, 2014





fever poems




o the blue wind mouth sky 
sucking on the earths tit again

i'm an old funny nobody
falling miles away on the hill side!

gotta make it to the big blue wind
up gallivanting thru the sucking sky








raven, who are you calling?
don't call the bad witch, its only a fever
besides, your face is snowy and grey
so no one can take you seriously

you, yourself come
eat these tomatoes from
my fever bent hands

now i hear the white falcon coming
should we linger through her fury?








                                                  o dark lady of the shadows
                                                  quivering in the locust leaves

                                                  the downright fact of it is
                                                  the deer refuse to be machines

                                                  what made me think i could solve this puzzle?








Saturday, July 19, 2014






clear water : mattole poems


                                          "I feel like a river
                                                                a wide river in the morning
                                                                birds and fish over and through me"
                                                                                          ~Janine Pommy-Vega




a sink hole has opened up
where last winter David
buried his horse
--a form becoming void
   creating a void
three gullies north
dark stones are pulling
the ocean back over themselves
we all need a rest







                                     i should spend the whole day in the apple tree
                                     20 limbs of leaf and sun and wind and fruit
                                     can go a long way towards quieting the mind

                                     picking off the too dense or misshapen apples
                                     i want to touch every branch

                                     the deer come right up to eat the forgone fruit
                                     while i think of ways to respectfully
                                     get them to fear me

                                     most likely i should go deep into the mountains
                                     where most things can be worked back into balance

                                     for now, i'll drop apples on their heads






Bear Creek needs to flow
back through the alder grove
with a better culvert
instead of crossing the road
in that awful gravel wash
to do so would "disturb
an existing community"
says Fish and Wildlife
one thats at most 6 years old

by the same logic
there should be no planting of forests
over the landfills because
gulls and rats live on our plastic

war seethes and money follows it
salmon burn in the hot shallow waters
they follow old, old river songs home






 
                                     swimming at the Ranch Hole
                                     back eddy where the cold water
                                     sinks and your toes stir it up

                                     river bar stones hot
                                     on my bare ass and grasshoppers
                                     hit me in the head

                                     i'd love to be here
                                     when the river swells
                                     or when the thousands
                                     of juvenile fish gather
                                     back at the cold seep
                                     in the rocks of the wing-dam

                                     but likely i will not be
                                     there is youngness in me yet and
                                     i am all too familiar with
                                     the flighty high that the
                                     first step in leaving brings

                                     stay here for me, river
                                     as if for one instant
                                     you remain unchanged
                                     i have nothing to do with you
                                     i should say it to the mountains
                                     but like me they are leaving too
                                     we're all always leaving
                                     i'll say it anyway
                                     but take me out of this, river
                                     stay here and the mountains you keep
                                     river, stay here








jane's roses


the whole day spent
pulling grasses 
from under Jane's roses

find a leaf 
trace it to the stalk
then stem   and tug

all day

the horses eyes 
following me
through the fog

Jane--
     how beautiful
     your roses each
     a different shape

    how they gather
    the mute light of
    a day in a cloud

    at sunset they glow
    the color of the blood
    they drew from me
    all day pulling grasses
    from their stony beds
    
Jane--  your roses!    
    on your hillside
    by the river
    at the sea









                                     it is not that there is nothing
                                     where we want a river flowing
                                     it's just the water is muddy
                                     as if some animal is crossing
                                     back and forth in a confusion
                                     like something could be learned
                                     on the other side
                                     and the footsteps stir the bottom
                                     to the murky edges

                                     its just that there is such thing as clear water
                                     that every stone and pulp of leaf
                                     and sunken branch and tiny fish
                                     can be seen with an unusual clarity
                                     and that the water magnifies whats in it
                                     that it spreads the light out evenly

                                     its that the water should be clear
                                     even up against the dark and tangled banks
                                     and where the tributaries cause cold riffles

                                     its that the reaches can be swum
                                   
                                     and all of it         
                                                            clear water






                                   


Tuesday, July 15, 2014






"for a moment" series, cont.





for a moment
at Mud Lake Ranch
the ospreys sang
to each other above
the wild morning glories

their calls reverberated
in a place i've only ever
seen the sunlight go










                        for a moment
                        i believed it to be
                        true that every poet
                        must at least for a moment

                        consider the grassheads
                        bowing in the wind










for a moment
the earth was enough

even the giggly young girls
admitted that something had
changed in the psychedelic dusk









a river could be loved






how close?

              only the thin

                            morning fog

                                         on your body

                                                               of water



Dan Brewer
from The Eel River Love Poems








sleep above the lower river




does the river shine all night?

even after the moon
stops lighting Tit Hill
     and the zodiacal light
     rescinds from the
     estuarine mouth

the river shines into night

Mars caught in the
Virgins ear of grain
   Arcturus always tickling
   my eyeballs,    checking
every hour,           its true

the river shines all night

in and out of opiums sleep
and the clicking of midnights insects
   the valley is a dark groove
   waterway subduction slit
--i'll love the river if i have to

the river shines all night

waking,
    fog bank doming
    Prosper Ridge
rolling over in the morning
a two-point yearling, eyes at mine

"the river shined all night!"

rise with sun-up dewy white
    fog comes inland
    to stick its clammy fingers
    in the valleys, snuff the river
'til the sun, elucidating air from cloud;

the river shining in the light