Warm nights,
the lee of twisty pines —
high jets crossing the stars
Things spread out
rolling and unrolling, packing and unpacking,
— this painful impermanent world.
Exploring the Grouse Ridge — crossing through
manzanita mats from
peak to peak — scaring up grouse
Creek flowing out of Lake Fauchery
old white dog
caught in the fast current
— strong lads saved him
Coming back down the
trail from Glacier Lake
KJ lifts her T-shirt
“look, I’m getting boobs”
two tiny points, age nine.
Down in the meadow
west end of Sand Ridge
the mosquitos bite everyone
but Nanao and me — why?
Sand Ridge
How you survived —
gravelly two mile lateral moraine of
sand and summer snow and hardy flowers
always combing the wind
that crosses range and valley from the sea.
Walk that backbone path
ghosts of the pleistocene icefields
stretching down and away,
both sides
III
Daily Life
WHAT TO TELL, STILL
Reading the galley pages of Laughlin’s Collected Poems
with an eye to writing a comment.
How warmly J speaks of Pound,
I think back to —
At twenty-three I sat in a lookout cabin in gray whipping wind
at the north end of the northern Cascades,
high above rocks and ice, wondering
should I go visit Pound at St. Elizabeth’s?
And studied Chinese in Berkeley, went to Japan instead.
J puts his love for women
his love for love, his devotion, his pain, his causing-of-pain,
right out there.
I’m 63 now & I’m on my way to pick up my ten-year-old
stepdaughter
and drive the car pool.
I just finished a five-page letter to the County Supervisors
dealing with a former supervisor,
now a paid lobbyist,
who has twisted the facts and gets paid for his lies. Do I
have to deal with this creep? I do.
James Laughlin’s manuscript sitting on my desk.
Late last night reading his clear poems —
and Burt Watson’s volume of translations of Su Shih,
next in line for a comment.
September heat.
The Watershed Institute meets,
planning more work with the B.L.M.
And we have visitors from China, Forestry guys,
who want to see how us locals are doing with our plan.
Editorials in the paper are against us,
a botanist is looking at rare plants in the marsh.
I think of how J writes stories of his lovers in his poems —
puts in a lot,
it touches me,
So recklessly bold — foolish? —
to write so much about your lovers
when you’re a long-time married man. Then I think,
what do I know?
About what to say
or not to say, what to tell, or not, to whom,
or when,
still.
(1993)
STRONG SPIRIT
Working on hosting Ko Un great Korean poet.
I was sitting on the floor this morning in the dark
At the Motel Eco, with my steel cup full of latte from the Roma
calendar template sketched in pencil:
student lunches, field trips in the Central Valley
waterfowl? Cold Canyon? State Library with Kevin Starr?
Charlie wants to help with speakers money so he gave us some
in the flat plain valley just by Putah Creek,
which was re-routed by engineers a hundred years ago.
I’m on the phone and on the e-mail working all this out
students and poets to gather at the Cafe California
the Korean graduate student too
His field is Nineteenth Century Lit and he’s probably a Christian,
but says he’ll do this. Delfina, wife of Pak, a Korean Catholic,
looks distasteful at the book and says
Ko Un’s a Buddhist! — I don’t think she’ll come to the reading.
Drive the car through a car wash — get Sierra mud off,
about to meet him at the airport, his strong wife Sang-wha
with him in flight from Seoul.
First drive to Albany and pick up Clare Yoh,
Korean Studies at Berkeley, lives near an
old style eucalyptus grove, the smell surprised me
when I visited California as a kid — I like it still.
Down to the airport meet at Customs
and now to pay respects to our friend
poet, translator, Ok-ku died last fall
her grave on the ridgetop near the sea.
Straight up a hill due west
walk a grassy knoll in the wind,
Ko Un pouring a careful trickle of soju on her mound,
us bowing deep bows
— spirits for the spirit, bright poet gone
then pass the cup among the living —
strong.
(2001)
SHARING AN OYSTER WITH THE CAPTAIN
“On June 17, 1579, Captain Francis Drake sailed his ship, The Golden Hinde, into the gulf of the Farallones of the bay that now bears his name. He sighted these white cliffs and named the land Nova Albion. During his 36 day encampment in California, Drake repaired his ship, established contact with local Indians, explored inland, took on supplies and water, and claimed the region for Queen Elizabeth.”
Along the roadside yarrow, scotch broom, forbs,
hills of layered angled boughs like an Edo woodcut,
rare tree — bishop pine — storm-tuned,
blacktop roadbed over the native Miwok path
over the early ranches “M” and “Pierce”
— a fox dives into the brush,
wind-trimmed chaparral and
estuary salt marsh, leaning hills,
technically off the continent,
out on the sea-plate, “floating island.”
— Came down from inland granite and
gold-bearing hills madrone and cedar;
& from ag-fields laser land-levelers,
giant excavators — subdivision engineers
“California” hid behind the coastal wall of fog
Drake saw a glimpse of brown dry grass and gray-green pine,
came into a curve of beach. Rowed ashore,
left a scat along the tideline, cut some letters in an oak.
The “G” Ranch running Herefords,
Charley Johnson growing oysters
using a clever method from Japan,
and behind the fog wall
sunny grassy hills and swales
filled with ducks and tules.
Cruising down the narrow road-ridge
one thing we have together yet:
this Inglis — this Mericano tongue.
— Drake’s Bay cliffs like Sussex —
gray and yellow siltstone, mudstone, sandstone,
undulating cliffs and valleys — days of miles of fog.
Gray-mottled bench boards lichen.
Sea gulls flat down sun-warmed
parking lot by cars.
We offer to the land and sea,
a sierra-cup of Gallo sherry,
and eat a Johnson’s oyster from the jar,
offer a sip of Sack to the Captain
and an oyster raw:
a salute, a toast
to Sir Francis Drake
from the land he never saw.
SUMMER OF ’97
West of the square old house, on the rise that was made
when the pond was dug; where we once slept out;
where the trampoline sat,
Earth spirit please don’t mind
If cement trucks grind
And plant spirits wait a while
Please come back and smile
Ditches, lines and drains
Forms and pours and hidden doors
The house begins:
Sun for power
Cedar for siding
Fresh skinned poles for framing
Gravel for crunching and
Bollingen for bucks —
Daniel peeling
Moth for singing
Matt for pounding
Bruce for pondering
Chuck for plumbering
David drywalling
staining, crawling;
Stu for drain rock
Kurt for hot wire
Gary for cold beer
Carole for brave laugh
til she leaves,
crew grieves,
Gen for painting
each window frame
Gen-red again
Garden cucumbers for lunch
Fresh tomatoes crunch
Tor for indoor paints and grins
Ted for rooftiles
Tarpaper curls
Sawdust swirls
Trucks for hauling
Barrels for burning
Old bedrooms disappearing
Wild turkeys watching
Deer disdainful
Bullfrogs croaking,
David Parmenter for bringing
flooring oak at night
Though his mill burned down
He’s still coming round.
Cyndra tracing manzanita
On the tile wall shower,
Sliding doors
Smooth new floors —
Old house a big hall now
Big as a stable
To bang the mead-stein on the table
Robin got a room to write a poem,
& no more nights out walking to the john.
Carole finally coming home
Peeking at her many rooms.
Oak and pine trees looking on
Old Kitkitdizze house now
Has another wing —
So we’ll pour a glass and sing —
This has been fun as heaven
Summer of ninety-seven.
REALLY THE REAL
for Ko Un and Lee Sang-wha
Heading south down the freeway making the switch
from Business 80 east to the 1-5 south,
watch those signs and lanes that split
duck behind the trucks, all going 75 at 10 am
I tell Ko Un this is the road that runs from Mexico to Canada, right past
San Diego — LA — Sacramento — Medford — Portland — Centralia —
Seattle — Bellingham, B.C. all the way,
the new suburban projects with cement roof tiles
neatly piled on unfinished gables,
turn onto Twin Cities Road, then Franklin Road
pull in by the sweet little almost-wild Cosumnes River
right where the Mokulumne meets it,
(umne a Miwok suffix meaning river)
walking out on a levee trail through cattail, tule, button-brush,
small valley oaks, algae on the streams. Hardly any birds.
Lost Slough, across the road, out on the boardwalk
— can’t see much, the tules all too tall. The freeway roar,
four sandhill cranes feeding, necks down, pacing slow.
Then west on Twin Cities Road til we hit the river.
Into Locke, park, walk the crowded Second Street
all the tippy buildings’ second stories leaning out,
gleaming bikes — huge BMW with exotic control panel
eat at the Locke Gardens Chinese place, Ko Un’s choice,
endless tape loop some dumb music, at the next table one white couple,
a guy with a beard; at another a single black woman
with two little round headed clearly super-sharp boys.
Out and down to Walnut Grove til we find road J-11 going east
over a slough or two then south on Staten Island Road. It’s straight,
the fields all flat and lots of signs that say
no trespassing, no camping, no hunting, stay off the levee.
Driving along, don’t see much, I had hoped, but about to give up.
Make a turn around and stand on the shoulder, glass the field:
flat farmland — fallow — flooded with water —
full of birds. Scanning the farther sections
hundreds of sandhill cranes are pacing — then,
those gurgling sandhill crane calls are coming out of the sky
in threes, twos, fives, from all directions,
circling, counter-spinning, higher and lower,
big silver bodies, long necks, dab of red on the head,
chaotic, leaderless, harmonic, playful — what are they doing?
Splendidly nowhere thousands
And back to Davis, forty miles, forty minutes
shivering to remember what’s going on
just a few miles west of the 5:
in the wetlands, in the ongoing elder what you might call,
really the real, world.
(October 2001, Cosumnes and Staten Island)
ANKLE-DEEP IN ASHES
Ankle-deep gray muddy ash sticky after rain
walking wet burnt forest floor
(one-armed mechanic working on a trailer-mounted generator
a little barbecue by a parked trailer,
grilling steak after ten hours checking out the diesels)
— we’re clumping through slippery ashes to a sugar pine
— a planner from a private timber company
a fire expert from the State, a woman County Supervisor
a former Forest Service line officer, the regional District Ranger,
a businessman-scientist who managed early retirement and does good
deeds,
the superintendent of the county schools,
& the supervisor of one of the most productive public forests in the
country —
pretty high back in the mountains
after a long hot summer wildfire and a week of rain.
Drove here through miles of standing dead trees
gazed across the mountain valley,
the sweep of black snags with no needles,
stands of snags with burnt needles dangling,
patches of green trees that still look live.
They say the duff layers glowed for weeks as the fire sank down.
This noble sugar pine we came to see is green
seven feet dbh, “diameter at breast height”
first limb a hundred feet above.
The District Ranger chips four little notches
round the trunkbase, just above the ashy dust:
cambium layer dry and brown
cooked by the slow duff burn.
He says, “Likely die in three more years
but we will let it stand.”
I circumambulate it and invoke, “Good luck — long life —
Sarvamangalam — I hope you prove him wrong”
pacing charred twigs crisscrossed on the ground.
(Field trip to the aftermath of the Star Fire, 5 November 2001)
WINTER ALMOND
Tree over and down
its root-rot clear to the air, dirt tilted
trunk limbs and twiglets crashed
on my mother’s driveway — her car’s barricaded
up by the house — she called last night
“I can’t get out”
I left at dawn — freezing and clear,
a scatt
er of light snow from last week still
little Stihl arborist’s chainsaw (a thrasher)
canvas knapsack of saw gear
and head for town fishtailing ice slicks
She’s in the yard in a mustard knit hat and a shawl cerise
from her prize heap of woolens
from the world’s Goodwills
The tree’s rotten limbs and whippy sprouts both
in a damn near dead old frame
my mother eighty-seven (still drives)
worries the danger,
the snarl of the saw chases her into the house
in the fresh clear air I move with the limbs and the trunk
crash in a sequence and piled as it goes, so,
firewood rounds here, and the brushpile there.
rake down the drive for the car — in three hours.
Inside where it’s all too hot
drink chocolate and eat black bread with smoked oysters,
Lois goes over her memory of my jobs as a youth
that made me do this sort of work
when I’m really “So intellectual. But you always worked hard as a kid.”
She tells me a story: herself, seventeen, part-time clerk in a store
in Seattle, the boss called her in for a scolding.
“how come you shopped there?” — a competitor’s place.
— her sister worked there (my Aunt Helen)
who could get her a discount as good