To have every bird in the woods

finally sing and I am known to it

is all the morning I ask

To see the flower garden

move as a dress on your body

is all the day I ask

To have the stars rise from the river

and you not think of me as crazy

has to be the night ahead

Bob Arnold

Longhouse

in the sudden spring cold
that shrivels the magnolia blooms
the stones gather day warmth
and pass it to my hands

sun shines through
a black shafted
blue jay feather
stuck in the braid

i return to joy

the wind touches
everything
       all day
      



the light sometimes
caught in
       the daffodils




thoughts
of far and away
go out to rest among
        the stones

water's flowing

the sound

comes toward my home

know what i'll promise you?

skies be bright & clear for you

that's what i'll promise you

the sound is fading out

it's more like five sounds

FREEDOM

sound is really fading out

it's more like five sounds

Chippewa

quiet and far

you should go quiet and far
when the best thing
you can do for your friends
is to leave them alone

there should be some sense
that you are learning anything
from the ineffable moments,
that they don't just stack over you
until you can't see the past

you should take out your old feathers
when you've gone quiet and far
and learn a thing or two about rivers
and the fishes that breathe in them

it could be that there is no calm
way of knowing precisely what to do
with the years, and that they'll
sink in lazily despite your concerns
that they're not shaping up quite right

you should hope that the persistent
growth and decay of notions in your mind
will one day provide a suitable soil
to sprout some respectable food and flowers

it should not surprise you that
the voice you trust the most
is none other than
the winds

she doesn't lie

Lagunitas to Bolinas

"The feeling of the country settled into him, the great emptiness and age of it, the feel of westward mountains old as time and plains as wide as forever and the blue sky flung across. The country didn't give a damn about a man or an animal. It let the buffalo and the antelope feed on it and the gophers dig and the birds fly and the men crawl around, but what did it care, being one with time itself?... ... Looking back, it was as if time ran into itself and flowed over, running forward from past times and running back from now so that yesterday and today were the same. Or maybe time didn't flow at all but just stood still while a body moved around in it."

~The Big Sky,  A.B. Guthrie, Jr.

The Last Resort

drought

"I've been here 40 years,

never had to water the garden in January.

Things are gonna get really weird."

have the rain maidens all gone?

here i was thinking they preferred the damp
warmth of these winter valleys,
but some huge oaf of a pressure system
out on the Pacific
has sent them scurrying east

their hearts have tasted the sweet of cold
and snow, and now who knows
when the rivers will be high enough
for the salmon to lay their crimson roe

everyone is confused, not used
to all this low sunlight in January
and the cold the open sky affords;

i concluded the scrub jay
was screaming solely because he could see his breath
while doings so, having never seen this before;

the cherries and magnolias are opening their blossoms
but there is hardly anyone to kiss them;

personally i think the varied thrushes
are enjoying the drought,
they give breathy whistles all day
and seem to knock the laurel nuts
into the pond with a fervency,
some sort of animagical ritual
to stave off the clouds?

me? i'm just dreaming often
of puddles full of maple leaves
and the remembrance of being drenched
underneath the redwood tree all night
thinking how well a wet-night in the duff
can cure a heart that breaks itself

dendrology

often my vision is coordinated
to the directional geometry of trees

i spend hours just determining
which douglas fir is most accurately
pointing at the moon


and then the oak,
who (like me) clearly gets her best
thinking done in the twilight;
i am coming to believe she has a
particular affinity for Jupiter
whom she tosses and tangles
in her limbs and leaves
until just past midnight
when she rests


and it was a full ten minutes staring
before i realized the careful swaying in the morning sun
and that all the needles and leaves shivered
sparingly, as if to make best use of this delicate wind

dry winter; its fruits

there are two pale wasps
above my door

they have me bow
as i come and go




-----




o how i long to fall
into the graceful curves
of the earth that are seen sometimes
by eagles on high thermals
and traveling businessmen
and young girls who look out,
whom have always dreamed
of being birds




-----




there it was;
a perfectly quiet meadow


and then two crows
on the quiet wind
calling loudly into it




-----




AIRPLANE EAST

up and over, Great Valley,
Yosemite in snow,
     the White Desert,
rust and copper mesas
and on to
     Cordilleran ridge bone
     --mountains, valleys,
        mountains valleys

all of it surfaced
with snow
that pales the earth

an illimitable whiteness;

the only color that
passes into silence




-----




in an effort to counteract
the effects of a busy sleepless city
in southern Florida
i slept on the hotel room floor
with my head pointing due North

and in the shades-drawn darkness
i dreamt of the peaceful company
of old friends
and the sublime
mystery of love