Salmon

One follows salmon with single malt scotch and sets aside the small square glass
on a square of Brazilian quartzite all sounding very exotic for effect but it's the world
you know so don't go raising your eyebrows just accept the miracle our large

planetary group represents and get over it, under it, through it, I've said it
all before the prepositional prospecting we need to claim but the point is
smoky boxed up salmon good till 2016 can you believe that but cut into

and opened up for a decent soiree I'm shrugging my shoulders here why
not? one asks and also...with that lovely though slightly shy-making odor
on the fingertips well it's not everyone who understands, not everyone

who accepts you for who you are just fresh as you might be from a soiree
quartered beets dark red so deep you look outside and check to see yes
it's night and cucumbers cool as courtyards in northern Africa their seeds

naked and inviting okay this could go on right through to lychee sorbet
pink with sliced peaches and more zinfandel can you believe it yes
it takes a kind of faith to carry on in such a world where was I

the peat of single malt Scotch from Islay the small island windswept
and stories of Moroccan rendezvous it's crazy how these intersect
but they do it's true and you I'm sorry I just don't know how

we got here 

Sometimes Getting From A to Be

Sometimes getting from a to be can be so what was the word she was looking for? dreamlike.

She left her car unlocked without looking back and cut across the road through the haphazard morning rush hour such as it was out in the sleepy town thinking to herself the so-and-sos never pay attention to crosswalks anyway. She reached curbside where the coffee shop regulars had vacated table and chairs on the edge and pushed back under the overhang.

Oh yes. Thunderstorm on the way. Everybody who had any wits about them could see the nimbo-stratus heaviness and gloom fast descending from the east. Air temp had dropped and the smell of what exactly. That curious freshness. Maybe ozone?

The line leading to her morning fix shifted from one or more legs to another like a pantomime centipede body angled against the doorway and looping back inside where body heat was palpable and conversation was shall we say politely reflecting the state of the world at 7a.m.

She touched the headlines of today's Gazette and asked people seated and standing This anybody's? When she got the blank looks as permission she didn't hesitate and turned on the typical Martha performance that is doing something useful in an otherwise tedious situation. Make it fun. Right? Her eye caught a subheading bottom right that made her freeze and the room busy with lattés and mochas double shots and English muffins toasted crispy—all that disappeared.

Oh my God, she said aloud.

People she'd recognized from her community over the years people who would at one time have distanced themselves moved closer. What's up? Whatcha got there? But she didn't have time. She abandoned her place in line just as the barista called out Americano!

Some Dreams

Some dreams are so tactile the bed falls away
the air in the room loses ambience and any chill
of waking in the dark

—some dreams find the center and turn the whole of you
inside out without you knowing it
what do you know anyway
what's forgotten reappears
reminds you it's showtime every time
and the wings flying system substage
and of course auditorium are occupied
each pair of eyes turning their own
insides out in a kind of melding
that far surpasses your usual stretch of the imagination
where intimacy is concerned touching say as we do
bumping into each other as if a casual
idiomatic expression has much deeper meaning
but it takes some serious dreaming to get the picture
who's to say it's not the other way around?
that we limit our perceptions in this so-called
wakeful life for the sake of navigation
getting from a to be or do I mean Chicago
to New York or was it from the front door
to the closet where the cat food is kept
there in the dark because between down
during and under over up the inches
or miles separating cities and mundane
journeys of the domestic kind we'd be
floating in perpetual confusion maybe
get side-tracked into a little unknown
cul-de-sac and settle down for 30 years
or so do you think that's why some people
have several families spread around
the globe some dreams do seem so
tactile as if by staring straight ahead
the distance will magically rise to meet you
but this means nothing really how
I mean how can dreams so ethereal so
unquantifiable so subjectively
identifiable so out of reach and yet
so within how can they mean anything
more than just movie-going
for the common man

Cable Knit

Cable Knit

Her entry way was curiously empty, bare linoleum with no soul, only the small kitchen at the back beckoning with its sound of the kettle whistling.

Ah, tis grand altogether, she said, as I hovered on her threshold. It was the height of the three day fair that came in like a pagan carnival ruled by a great long-horned mountain goat and went out like a drunken flea circus—the smells of cattle and sheep at my back—the bleating and crying in the street, mud and piss spilling into the doorways. Only the dirty little children sticky with boiled sweets gave us any sense this was supposed to be fun.

She stood with her arms crossed keeping a life of celibacy close and tight against her chest, keeping the cold Irish morning at bay with knotted limbs, keeping those strong fingers warm and ready for her next fierce battle of the knitting needles.

Tis the sweater, ye call it—we'd be calling it a jumper, or a pullover, sure—isn't that what ye're after?

Neither sweater nor jumper seemed adequate descriptions for the thick patterned arrangement of lanolin-heavy wool called an Aran. Yes, yes, I said.

My God, I can smell the turf burning in her back room to this day. And there the stairs that led to her life as spinster seamstress, to the room at the top where miles of fleece combed and spun into yarn struggled against her fingers till they succumbed to the ancient patterns, twists and turns willed into being by this remarkable woman whose keen memory needed no plan written down to make for you something that would ward off wind and cold and much, much more for a very long time.

She jerked her head with half a nod, a timeless country shrug, eyebrows and all, and gave a short tut with her tongue. They say this one's The Tree of Life, she said.

Woman Found Guilty

WOMAN FOUND GUILTY OF THEFT reads the headlines. She took it. Something so big or so valuable it warrants a very big can't miss it boldface typeset layer on the left side of the front page. Maybe she stole a shopping center, pretty big. And if she did the news would read HOW DID SHE DO IT? or IT'S GONE! Maybe MOLL STOLE MALL!

Maybe a diamond necklace? Nah! Why would she steal something she expects to be given by the man of her dreams? Gucci bag? HAG BAGS BAG?

This is getting nowhere fast. She stole someone's heart! Now that's guilty as proven but who's the judge? What annoys me about this headline? Oh, it's a WOMAN found guilty. Would we see MAN FOUND GUILTY? Ah, forget it.

'Twas a water buffalo

'Twas a water buffalo no horse
that Lao Tzu rode across the plains
Bubalus bubalis 'twas of course
ten thousand silken threads for reins

Tell me said the wanderer to the moon
how it came to pass that Lao Tzu's mother
carried him sixty two years in her womb
till she could go not one step further

How she leaned against a plum tree
and out came the philosopher fully made
whisky-face, long ears and wild goatee
swinging his necklace of single twist jade

The moon leaned down to reply
but out of the east a dragon cloud came
and devoured the earth, the moon, the sky
swallowed the wanderer and his name

White Space

White Space

There it is. Right here. Not there.
Take that distance in the form of the letter
T the man outstretched the road
with two choices and breathe
for the white space is here

and now a resting place
a place of letting go in the shallows
where the effort relaxes and the poet
sings through the spinal chord
and every guitar resonates

without a single string being plucked
each word untangling itself
from your childhood fears of periphery
wooded dark enticing ensnaring you
with its magnetic candy

till you become unstuck from your sheets
and scream out in confusion against
a night oppressed by imagery
in the cave on the linoleum the ceiling
where's the mother's voice when you need it

okay she would say it's okay
you're just having a bad dream
and light somehow dispelled
those difficult words though
I do wonder if I'm old enough yet

to understand even the things I say
myself and so I say it's here
the four corners and the inner circle
the loops and dots the marks
the child mind brings to meditation

till the room spins it's the emptiness
after all as Lao Tzu would from his horse
say peach in hand ready for the bite
of his life teeth grazing over the grooves
of the stone embedded in the body of flesh

Imaginary Invalid

Plaza Inn, Ashland, Oregon May 29, 2011

Sound of the creek past midnight.

Moliere's Le Malade Imaginaire singing in my ears—Oded Gross and Tracy Young's adaptation, that is. Once again, fabulous ensemble work—and I mean the entire cast, not just the song and dance ensemble who came in at key points like the girls in Little Shop...

How remarkable now I think of it, the interaction with the audience, specifically a 25 year old from Grants Pass named Joy Cunningham who works as a teller, facts gleaned in a laid back ho hum Fool's errand into the auditorium sliding along the apron as our main man slept in his wheel chair. Audience members audibly groaned with disapproval as the Fool walked away saying Well, no one could be expected to write a song of beauty with such information, that name, that age, etc.

So how extraordinarily effective and explosive when much later he emerges "cured" by the Scottish doctor (the maid disguised) with a song filly luxuriously with Ms Cunningham's details...extraordinary for its effect but also for its clear connection to the core of the play, in that we are married to our personal perceptions of ourselves (and through that feat of psychic engineering, everyone around us) in sickness and in health—nay, therefore choosing sickness or health as our stance...

A remarkable demonstration. Do you know there is little work of note on the subject of audience?

In Memory of Our Friend Joy Craddick

She is a bead of rainwater at the top of the ridge pendulous on the new branch of green sprouting maple

She is the cloud rising or falling who can tell there in the canyon making love to the creek as it rushes through dancing over under and against the granite boulders still lodged happily where flood left them

She is the sentinel crow mounted atop live oak as we descend into the switchback

She is the lilac burgeoning in faint purple clusters in the wet fragile bushes of the town

She is the smoke on the cheek of the woman on her porch coffee in hand phone pressed to her ear

She is the broad dark span of wings outstretched as the great blue heron soars over the quiet road

She is the laughter of the a small girl in the corner of an eye in the curve of a bridge in a sudden step of the curb in the sleight of hand of the clown on the plaza

She is the release of an audience into the afternoon their applause clinging and singing in their clothes the wool the modern fibers the leather feather weave and braid button and belt

She is the teeth crowded into the smile of an old woman on a bicycle bent into the hill

She is the railroad tie thickening underfoot

She is the long endless reach of the stainless steel rail how the spikes pin the incongruous together and invite the journey into the open passage through mountains where the emigrant fell to his knees by the spring and cried out in despair

She is the hand touching your arm as the breath leans into you

She is Medicine Buddha

She is Christ's smile

She is Muhammad's fierce gift

She is prayer flags unrolled and tied up into the wind on the most auspicious morning

She is the circle of women remembering their grandmother's stories as the long braid is cut and the head shaved before the surgeon's cut

She is the daughter wielding the scissors

She is the youngest one crying for the first time

She is the last cry and the birth of a sigh at midnight

She is the fire in the hearth before it is set

She is the snow in the gap in that brief wink of sunlight

She is the shovel left in the ground and the thrush gripping the handle

She is the worm working the onion peel the coffee grounds the green trimmings and castaway grains of rice soaked in shoyu

She is a hollow vibration slipping into the second chamber of the black walnut flute in the key of G or was it F sharp?

She is the voice of my father embedded in an oak tree

She is the ballerina without points liberated from the wings last seen tiptoeing like a ring-necked dove over the rooftops

She is the wheel the rim the spokes and whirring mile the spinning question

She is an opening and the memory of a door

She is the alpha wave trading places with the beta wave

She is the gift of the ocean and the emptiness of a boy's pocket

She is the key turning in the lock

She is the dust on the page a list undoing itself punctuation pretending to be invisible

She is pain trembling for its very existence a vial of truth in the hesitation that comes between breaths

She is the palm of your hand passing over the forehead clearing a second thought to make way for every first thought

She is the quiet battle in the vast plain

She is the small heart in the humming wire

She is the preoccupied mind occupied with suffering in the motel they call this life

She is a window cleaner a waitress the man snaking his hose from an air compressor to your flat tire

She is the scent of pure joy on the wrists the twist of sage and the allure of the tattooed bic lighter

She is the light that is left that was always here and never left

She is a soft footstep heard overhead a gentle greeting

She is two eyes widening with love and compassion

She is a small furry creature curled into a cushion made by the first woman

She is a slight shift in the way you stand an inclination of the head

She is the grief you take out of your purse at the end of the day

She is the relief the release the repeating syllables of prayer snapping and cracking in the cast iron stove the recognition of this life in the mirror the fingertips against the temple walls the permission the flight from the garden the illusion and the descent of painted scenery when you least expect it

She is the living treasure weeping on the edge of the stage and the fox leaping into the piano

She is the word now appearing like dregs at the bottom of your glass

Sylvia Beach Hotel—A journal entry

Sylvia Beach Hotel, Newport, Oregon, May 20th, 2011
http://www.sylviabeachhotel.com/

One of my regrets would be that I will never again have the pleasure of sneaking into a cafe, any cafe I like, sitting down and diving into my world and no one knowing what I am doing and no one bothering about me and being totally anonymous, that was fantastic.

J. K. ROWLING, BBC News, Jul. 17, 2005

The photography group left at 4:30 this morning to work at Seal Rock at sunrise. All of Hogwarts tumbling downstairs in the dark it seemed. I joined them late at breakfast—passed on the cooked and went for raw fruit—Panini Café Americano in hand—and told them I was wakeful anyway. Jane Austen's room occupant told me I could expect a comfy bed when I switched rooms later.

Gryffindor's four-poster seemed all right but my back was tweaking. Today will stretch and walk much more. Outside street lights bright all night. First night in six I didn't take a sleeping pill. Might have to reconsider that. I was extremely groggy waking up. Mind you, half a bottle of King Estate pinot noir followed much later by the obligatory shot of single malt (Redbreast) in Nana's Irish pub probably  wasn't doing me any favors. Well tonight I booked myself a table at April's across the street so there will be no party of shutter bugs—though meeting them was informative and amusing.

I think the loft is my favorite space in the house. Banquet table pushed against the east wall, ceiling slope overhead. The six plus feet wide poster of the Oregon coast pinned to the slope is quite intimidating—so what must the real thing be like? That's a great example of an abstraction taking on greater dimension with greater impact on the psyche than direct experience. The long drive will of course affect me directly physiologically and in the long term psychologically—such big nickel words—but the map does serve to give me a literal heads up regarding tomorrow's drive, from here to Brookings. In other words, if I don't start out early, I won't be in Brookings till dark. And there won't be a lot of opportunities to stop.

Today, having said all that, I may take a nostalgic trip north to Depoe Bay, not far, to flesh out my recollections of that summer with Pam and David.

Last night's restlessness and wakefulness was visited by dreams of elaborate bullying and intimidation—in one case someone rather well-off and possibly gay throwing lighted matches at me one by one. I kicked the box of matches remaining away which angered him. He threatened to use his influence to blackball me and my family from any institution in Stinson Beach of all places. I woke up and lay there remembering a weasly asshole in Arlington High daily teasing me, seeking me out, and my adamant refusal to "step outside" which only added fuel. Looking back I think I somehow knew—or reasoned, is perhaps a better way of saying it—that getting physical, that is, hitting him, would not help. And yet, how many instances of teenage altercation do we see that seem to illustrate the opposite? What if I had gone home and asked my experienced boxer father to guide me in some nifty punching techniques? I probably would have gone to Vietnam from college. Instead I rationalized my way to a life of non-violence. I still do not believe that damaging or destroying the other helps anyone. Regarding the Hitler question, he was allowed to go too far first by the German people and then by the European "community" as he invaded and bullied one country after another. Too many aristocrats and industrialists were waiting and watching—even joining in—for Adolph to be thwarted. Allowing him to rise up in Germany and then proceed towards empire building was not a series of nonviolent acts. Of course, nothing I just said has much substance or credibility for obvious reasons.

To continue with last night. My wakeful thoughts turned to other fears such as my being here on the—have you heard? It's on all the billboards—fateful day—Saturday the 21st—the last day of the world. Well yes. I even felt the hotel trembling and thought how ironic I decide to travel the greater length of Oregon coastline the day it falls into the ocean. Hell, even Highway 20 from Corvallis to Newport is officially closed today, the Friday before, the penultimate day! Okay. There was a distinct braiding of fear and amusement but I sedated triple warmer anyway and calmed down. Soon enough, my thoughts turned to Harry Potter's milieu since I was of course meaningfully assigned Rowling's room. I thought of opening the owl's cage—at least opening the window—but I did settle on the world of magic as thematic until I fell back to sleep. In my descent into slumber my admiration for Rowling grew, particularly how she highlighted teenage bullying and intimidation. Harry had his circle of friends and his "good" house for safety. I had Janie Beck—who taught me always wear black socks—and others, plus the "safety" of good rapport with several teachers, notably Feldman who taught Latin, and my own cousin Holmes who ran the audio-visual department.

As for magic, I know Rowling's on the record as nonbeliever, but we do need it. Not need "it" so much as an understanding of our own powers and an understanding of great force at large in the world. Rowling and Tolkien among others tap into this beautifully. One only has to consider our friend Joy's "gentle intention"—beginning with the thermometer attached to the fingertip to illustrate how we can raise or lower our own body temperature, and leading to my wife's changing her own brainwaves—to grasp that we really do have tremendous powers and we need them to learn how to use them. That's what school should be about for these things do not go away nor diminish. But that's not a focus here, so much.

For now I need to accept the truth of this for myself and act accordingly—finding meaning in and bringing meaning to this journey.

Why did we wait for anything?—Why not seize the pleasure at once?—How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!

JANE AUSTEN, Emma 1815

Sweet Life Patisserie

Looking for meaning we are interrupted
by a small girl asking four basic questions
dancing on and off the chair opposite.

Two tables over her father feeds baby brother.
What are you eating? she asks first.
Quiche, I say. Made of eggs. Like a pie.

Clock? she says, tapping my watch.
Yes indeed it has a small clock face.
What's that? moving closer, touching

the point of my pen. That's a pen, I say
but now her small index finger arches
emphatically down onto my open journal

and I start to answer but she runs away
leaving me with my list for the day.
Eat. Look at the time. Take my pen. Write.

Stopping by the Smith River

Stopping by to see the Smith River
it's been awhile we both lay down
put our heads together and talked
the current state of affairs running
right through our toes fingers hair
till I grew silent but she babbled on
incessant with no punctuation no
pause to her stream of consciousness
unless you call that beautiful laughing
water dancing marks of exclamation
I don't know I couldn't interrupt
once she'd started once she
recognized me by voice or impressions
made on her over the years by my
two daughters son and wife this life
she'd start to say this life what a gift
right? From high up in the mountains
all the way downstream to great mother
ocean and everything between
take that willow there thickening
under stones so smooth from being held
touched rolled so many times how
the willow branches show us the way
things tend to lean new buds on their
stripped down story of how things went
last winter yeah I finally managed to say
I know and looking up saw the great trees
leaning in eavesdropping
like it was all news

For Arika the Seeing Eye Dog

The paws twitch
the fleas itch
can you imagine the vast reaches
the ridges the gulches the long lashes
not to mention the wilderness of the tail
where follicle to follicle and strand to strand
through the dense fur of the seeing eye dog on
her side how the opportunistic flea
makes its way in that clawtooth ingrown
toenail sort of way that ectoskeletal inside
out dastardly impish trollish out
from under a rock in a dark don't
put your finger in there sort of way
only to find a landscape washed and treated
for invasive species of all walks and hops
just read the label flea! Your days are done!
Meantime in dreamtime the hostess
with the harness vibrates at rest with
the memory of long sun-baked walks down
open highway say Akoni Pule where
one scent can take you through the green
overgrowth into the shadowy leafy
undergrowth in pursuit of mongoose
rat chicken dog or best yet cat
but remember ah remember this
all in a dream-haze because out there
in wakefulness reason hath overtaken
instinct long since and the wildness tamed
like exquisite calligraphy of the soul
to flourish in two worlds the world of dog
dreams and the world of eyes
for the mistress both concurrently
till, that is, one is in recline
when one is allowed to dream