In The Mouth of the Western Earth

Volcanoes loom, white and commensurate.

Clouds settle into the saddles of mountains,

and fog doubles the river below.

Against these textures the amber lights

of our industrial havens fade.

The chorus of firs that rings the city

digresses into the hills, where deer

are mauling the azaleas, tearing the leaves

with uneven teeth. My woods is lush

with rhododendrons--North American,

Tibetan, Indian, Chinese. Japanese maples

grace the understory, lithe among blossoming
crabapples. Roses, embarrassments

from England, implore the air for sun.

Ivy goes feral, supreme and untrimmed.

Locks of my hair mix with the fuchsia,

and ferns drape from maples above.

Secured to the earth by storms, I slouch,

American, in the terrifying spring.

The recurring image is of a sail

passing from sight, the half

moon setting in the ocean. Or:

a whale arcs out of the surf, the black fin

hailing. Amidst the momentary spray,

it claims its breath and dives. So speaking,

peopling the air, I want only a cipher,

a while, against the agonizing space.

Once I saw it hover--barn owl, Nevada--

shrieking over the nest, the wings so stark

that I moved on hurriedly, anxious

for green terrain. And here in the garden

all is titillating, the gold in the hills,

the news reports soaked in violence,

and the awful politics of conciliation.

Groping through the thick desire,

I'm bound to fumble innocence, spill

blood as casually as coffee, regretting

only the stain. My passion for neatness,

for explaining away the asymmetries

of this world, fades in the absolute light.

A thousand corpses litter each sentence,

dead for a cause. The cause is purposeless-

ness, the passion newly charged, and changed.

“The centre cannot hold,"

I've been told again and again, until

hopelessness dizzies me, and begins

a momentum of its own. Fleeing

the light, I revolve around a style,

spun by the seasons and days.

Even hours kneel, and even minutes,

these smallest of histories, are compelled

by a logic of their own. The earth tilts

at an angle to the sun, and each degree

is brimming.

Walking absentmindedly to the barns,

I kick the powdery gravel. The orchard trees

have just leafed out, and I think of an almond,

inscrutable. Brown and shaped like an eye.

“Center of all centers, core of cores...self-

enclosed and growing sweet."She bent
at the creek, rinsing her hair in the current.
Flies skimmed the eddies. She was with me,
but she also traced, like our campfire smoke,
her own way through the trees. Putah Creek,
the pulsing course, had slowed for summer's offer.

The willows were brash, the orchards flush
with apricot and plum. Hornets

roused us from Eden so we'd not regret,

and even the dust assisted our love.

After a swim, we rolled in each other's arms,
our bodies marked with dirt: striated, awful,
strong. The sheen of our coupling was true;

the light was brief and stunning. Now
when the longing comes, it hoards me
under a wing. Safe from the ample death
of summer, safe in the stifling pith, I'm allowed a life

of solace, a closed existence fueled by the sun.

This life, begun in bitterness, ripens

to an almond plainness, arid and condensed.

A single point that contains all others.

Three in the morning, reading Chuang Tzu:

“to wear out your brain trying to make

all things into one without realizing

they are all the same. . ." I stare out

into the fields, at the moonlit bales of hay.

To bring all things under the label one,

I'd have to fill the barn, at this hour,

and the mountains and rivers won't fit.

All the same, they can stay scattered

out on that quirky earth.

I enter the valley at false dawn,

exhausted from driving

all night. Moths full of yellow wax

tap the windshield and smear.

Reeds spike the roadside air.

Deer eyes flash green in the brush,

and a shack, silver under

the fading stars, falls in upon

itself. Decay is as patient and sure

as the darkened half of the globe.

The edges of shadows, though

rounded, are microscopically

jagged. Viruses thrive in my throat.

I myself am an animal

in the mouth of the western earth.

Everywhere I sense displacements:

this highway was once a deer-path,

sunken, pocked with hoof-marks,

quartering the foothills,

and touching on the creek.

The first surveyor took note,

assigning it all a number. Now

I see does, some days, dropped

every few miles. And now, in

the dawn rush hour into the city,

I glimpse the faces inside the cars

as the traffic grinds toward dormancy,

like herds not quite outpacing the ice.

The green water is calm, ruffling

gently like down. Woodsmoke

trims the air, and cormorants

stroke toward the coastal mountains.

In a pool below the cliff, carp

are pursing the surface. A helix

of gnats disperses in the breeze.

Manzanita, just past flowering,

concentrates hard on fruition.

A presence shadows me through

the day. It's been here for eons:

I can tell by the scattered energy

of the sun, by the crow's long rasp.

Blacks and reds stand out. Dead

selves flake off, and fall in speckled

light under the bridge. The woods

is blue and translucent, while milky

oranges float and beat beyond

the leaves. As day wanes, I place

each twig, tepee-like, so the flame

scurries in tinder. From the treetops

my camp is a redwing. From

the cliff my camp is a star,

warming who-knows-how-many

multicolored worlds.

I'm moving away from scenery,

toward crumbling mountains

and forgotten creeks, toward canyons

cut in the Coast Ranges,

and razor-edged snowpatches, scarce,

toward towns with two hundred souls,

toward mountains without names.

On a trail marked by bear wallows,

I study the tablets on ponderosa pine,

the scrolls on manzanita.

In a nearly-dry creekbed,

towhees and juncos scratch in the weeds.

Flies hum in the menthol air.

Scrub-jays pant, bills held open,

their heat escaping in lieu of cries.

At a vanishing pool, I dip my shirt,

scattering the water-boatmen.

The checkered hills, the manzanita,

the washes adorned with mineral crowns,

amass inside the moment

as I press the cloth to my vein.

We live now, my lover and I,

in a stucco house, the flat roof

denying the rains. Our doors are hung

with cow skulls, and kiln-darkened pots

adorn a wall. On the street, ponies

clop by on their way to the sea,

and on New Year's Eve, the rifle-fire

is deafening. To the east the Siskiyou

rises, and a dense array of trees.

To the west, on a sunken beach,

I was astonished by a gray breaching

offshore: a whale, suspended

over my head! The days are like that:

so inundated with ominous beauty

that we live in a swoon. Even

our poverty is surreal: plastic bags

on the windows, swirling

linoleum on the floors. A garden

was left us by Laotian tenants: blue

earthworms are lodged in the dirt-clods

along with leeks and bok choy.

Ginger roots, fist-like. And

carrots nourished by rusting nails.

Squalls move over us constantly.

Redwoods gather the fog.

Steelhead are drawn in from the sea,

bright and silent as candles.

The streams are alien with tackle

that sways among the stones.

The trail up the Chetco Gorge

is mottled with sun and litter.

Poison oak gropes for the light.

We cross the creeks, stepping gingerly

over moss and debris. Below,

where the river pools, newts wander

in jigsaw paths. An otter emerges

from the forest edge, enters the current

to hunt. Whirring nighthawks drop out

of the sky. Lying nude on the stones,

reflecting the sun, we're elongated motes

of light. While in the transient river,

water-grottos limned in white

rise and disappear. What, in the end,

will we honor? What, in the end,

will endure? Basho, they say,

on his journeys, would often pause

at roadside shrines. Though he knew

of their presence through lore,

he still had to look for them thoroughly.

Obscured by vines and hedges,

they might go unnoticed for years.

Soon I discover that the Far West

is not, after all, history's end. The heroes

who tree cougars with their dogs

are only emulating royalty, gouging out

an American heraldry. History

is embodiment, and birth, though

on a slightly monstrous scale. Honored

beasts, larger than our lives, come pawing

for their due: the grizzly, the lynx,

the furtive wolf. The elk, swollen

at the neck, trumpets an ugly call, a

summons to a previous order. The hunt

allows us to slaughter history, to admire

its visage over the hearth. So we sigh,

lounging in the rustic lodge, recalling

the days when history lunged. Meanwhile,

Karoks, at ease in a grove, dress

for the deer-skin dance. The pelts

are embroidered with woodpecker scalps,

at the eyes, the nose, the lips. The dance

is long and intense. Custom decrees

that one among them, the “Kareya" man,

go off to suffer in solitude. For ten days

he pleads in the mountains, fasting

and moving about, naked in obeisance.

When finally he returns to the grove,

he's revered, feared, and clothed.

The dancers of both sexes, now released,

pose in sexual postures, and an orgy

ensues. Sentience is both heightened

and drowned, like a fish hauled up

from the sea. We're free to weep

for the joy of this, or we might mourn.

On a beach at the river-mouth, the surf

is lapping the pebbles, nudging them

less than an inch upstream.

There were flowers

on the trail, tiger lilies,

also called Columbia,

called Oregon lilies

as well. What names

had the natives used?

(On the Rogue, Milosz

as naturalist worried

that “A word should be

contained in every single

thing. But it is not. So

what then of my vocation?")

We climbed, through

white and noble fir,

through endemic spruces

and oak. At the Punchbowl

we camped among dwarf

cedars, shielded from

the wind. The walls

were snowy and steep.

A bear skirted the lake

on a ledge. In the creek,

a giant salamander lay

submerged. Trout came

eagerly to our grasshoppers.

Though the mountain

did not love us, we knew

our own love via its cliffs,

as if our words were--so

what of my vocation--only

understood as they echoed.

My father's bitterness was elegant,

as cool as a wedge of lime, but his binges

were terrible, as he grieved my mother

among burning cigarettes, among tissues

dropped like blooms. Soon enough a stroke

bent him for good, and nine years later, he died.

But I had left his city for the wild by then,

for forced innocence on private mountains,

among juniper trees, pinyons, and lizards

arthritic in the shade. The landscape filled

with twisted trees, with rivers that fell

through the forests, where the grotesque salmon

fought their way to the dams, where

the currents like cyclones rammed into the sea.

And I myself collapsed one day

at the base of a certain juniper, which I addressed

half-blindly, confused by the pins of sun

through the scale-like leaves. True,

I said, you have nothing to do with me,

but you seem so forthright, exposed to the elements,

your shag-bark peeling in a gesture that shears.

Your berries suggest my father's gin,

and, bluish like his body, go waxy and white.

My father could have stopped all this, stopped

the motion, and stopped the destruction.

I blame him habitually, I blame him for everything,

and I thank him for a life

inspired by his intimate distance. Long ago,

the kings cut the great cedars of Lebanon,

hewed beams for their palaces,

and ruled. Your cinnamon trunk is waiting,

your patience is astounding, as you sip and droop

without weeping, as you simply allow us

to do with you what we will.

We approach the lake, canoeing

an oak-shrouded creek. Vultures

prowl the green corridor, and

coots parry and dive. The course

opens to cattails, where blackbirds

perch under low summer clouds,

their yellow heads inscrutable.

Osprey peep from snags above.

We were speaking of grief, of

its smoldering presence in our lives.

What cramped billets have been

imposed upon us, what contours

of the future obscured. So why,

when the reeds finally thin to big

water, are we dissatisfied, unsure?

The lake is silver, unpromising,

plain: an almost discernible span.

We prefer the labyrinth shallows.

We turn the canoe to the reeds.

In the fern canyon, the walls

are feathery, tousled with air.

A newt, brown as an old penny,

crosses the trail. It's leathery

and cool to the touch, the belly

an almost fluorescent orange.

Its jaw quivers, but its black

and quicksilver eyes are calm.

So what dread, repressed and

small, grips me in these hollows?

This is the fecund and desolate

north: a saw-whet owl utters

its “upslurred whistle," and

the calls of thrushes spiral out
of the gorge. Skunk-cabbage crams
the bottoms, where water seeps.

Hemlock grows scaly and lean,

the limbs festooned with lichen.

Each stump nurses huckleberry

or alder. Moss is ubiquitous,

and salmonberry, salal. But

the green is rivaled by an under-

current, the presence of decay.

Or the two are inseparable: life

is just more apparent to the living.

(Who knows what the dead admire?)

At the inlet to Three-Mile Lake,

there's a good log bridge.

Mosquitoes are hatching from

a tea-colored bog. Warblers with

olive bodies and yellow breasts

mob the thickets for bugs. Their

eyes are black and circular, blank

even as they gleam. The males

with their black caps, the females

just a shade more drab, hunt

with enthusiasm in a delicate mist.

78 ( two anonymous canyons

See there, on the face of the green rock bank--

holes like hornets' nests where ancient boatmen braced their poles!

Only make sure the mind never clings!

--“Hundred Pace Rapids" Su Tung-p'o

Autumn ascends the canyon,

infuses the sky with cobalt,

and heats the silver aspens.

I steer the raft between rocks,

just fall through the gates,

relaxed. What's next is need:

maybe my house burns down

miles away, or Mars in the east

signifies nothing. The rim

of the earth tilts, and all

that rises in the early evening

is my body, on these swells.

I have faith in the moon,

never overt, that illumines

these walls. Like classical

language, the canyon logos

is deepened by pathos,

a churning, watery joy.

Scrambling to the rim,

scraping my palms, my

words fall past the questions

I've assigned. Now

I hear only the canyon's own

strong and neutral music.

All winter, storms out of the south-southwest

have assailed and built the dunes.

Now the winds switch to the north,

and the sand reverses its trek. The earth

paces like Rilke's panther, supremely other,

contained. The beach, though postcard fine,

is harsh: sand stings my ankles and thighs,

and gusts numb my face. Whitecaps

pinch the roiling water that even the gulls

avoid. A line of pelicans threads the surf.

A marten slinks off in the grass. Gorse

blooms feverishly. Pea-flowers, purple

and elaborate, grace a foredune above.

Geology, weather, predation: violences,

comprised of a dark neutrality. So why,

in humans, does force go awry, become

overwhelmingly brutal? If I could answer,

I'd answer to god. I'd address history

as an equal, and argue against the factual

horror. I'd begin again: our alpha

would be glorious, driven by love.

But here I've only cyphers, as the sand

is varnished to stone. My utopian musings

are moot. The palimpsest, unreadable, is

beautiful and whole. What is says

is nothing, what it is, everything. And here

I exult, assembling, not a world, but of

the world, a loving self. A fold is all

I require. Sky: a wash. Beachgrass,

spruce, and pines bent by the wind.

Where beetles, eccentric scriveners,

might hurry on the sand. Where creeks

might glide in their pale beds. Entreating,

retreating, I shelter in the dunes.

In the canopy, the wind is fierce,

tossing the firs. But here below it's calm

in my cavity near the sea. Birds slip

through walls of brush, shuffling twigs

as they go. Up the back of a forested dune,

pink rhododendrons, wild and gangly,

are clarion against the green. Rufous

hummingbirds swoop, attending

the flowers and mating. One climbs

to an apex, flashing a red fluorescent throat.

When it dives, its wings buzz in the hollow

like a string taut over wood.

127 The New Year

Claritas: an array of rocks in the Pacific,

off Cape Blanco, present in the surf.

We've made a habit, over time, of

observing the turning year at this coast,

as the constellations wheel at midnight,

oblivious to our measured years. Last

night we laughed and drank champagne

in our room at the Windemere. Today

we walk the cliff overlooking the beach.

Gazing south, a nostalgia overcomes us,

for California, and our late youth there,

irrevocably past. And an old grief

resurfaces: what illness and demise

we’ve witnessed in our fold. Parents

dead, families dissolved. Friends

all scattered, immersed in suffering. But

still, amazingly, something arises to saturate

the moment. Not lit, exactly, yet vivid.

Not violent, but bold. No beauty,

but an aesthetic so exact as to summon

our tears. It subsists. It clings to our skins

like thin salt air, here in this meadow

over water, in this fecund opening year.

The beaches at Bandon are peopled,

offshore rocks casting shadows at dusk

far up on the dunes. Face Rock

is in awe. The surf is hushed,

receding. My wife and little daughter

build villages in the sand. They play

amid ponies, starfish, and anenomies,

as the sun dissolves to a greenish ray.

Then we bundle in the car, drive home

on the edge of holiday America,

talking of old friends, lost. Lost & found,

adorned with salt, we are accompanied

by trees. On green fields back east,

the young men have left their little

monuments, turf thrown up by cleats,

crescents of mud in the moonlight.

While here on the western beaches,

secretive crabs emerge from the sand

for their long night of scavanging.

137

At Painted Hills: coral-colored flowers,

and gold basalt from flows. Claystone,

the greenish ash where fossils abound.

At a small desert wetland, blackbirds

rasp from the tules. I spot a bittern,

shy in the reeds. And a swimming scaup,

with its pale blue bill: another center,

meandering among the reds & mauves,

the magnesium hash-marks on hills.

Here the Miocene fauna (roughly 25

million yrs. old)--small horses, camels,

rhinos & swine, oreodonts, rodents,

& a diversity of cats (specialized teeth,

sized and honed to a living niche)--

seem more exotic than remote,

their bones exposed on nearby slopes

as ash and tuff erode. Here immortality

is ill-imagined, an oversimplified scheme.

Here sumptuous time envelopes me,

& living time goads me on. Time

excludes me too, chisels my psyche

away. What supple wreckage lies inside

this clay chaotic matrix? The clue will slip

at the least insistence. A cataclysmic ash

will fall, obliterating species, yet

holding this nuance in its intimate folds.

148

Among the temporal moments, there's

a more spatial time. An autumn oak rattles,

the light intimate among its leaves. Happen-

stance, little hands, and lobes as crucial

as our own: the oak creates the moment

that opens in its crown. While the sound

of a saxophone rolls out of my house

and lolls into the woods. Surfaces

intersect: my screen door swings open

in the air. A low front ebbs in the trees.

A squirrel weaves through the branches,

as a melody might, or a human voice.

But at some point the textures congeal.

Grief is flat and dense at once, and illness

sparkles with flecks of splintered density.

The moment of death is impenetrable,

and glossy as the light is shed. Children

swing in a house of air. Milkweed splits

at the given moment, offers its ghostly seed.

The seasons advance inside us. The years

silt up our interior lakes. Ordering time,

we order everything. We conjure up

hierarchies, cringing at the few above us,

and the many below. The oak, we say,

is first among trees, noble and enduring,

closest to the king. Prolific with its cupule

acorns, it spreads like a virus across its sky,

and then across its lands. In its shadow,

understory ripples like a horse's skin.

Where the oak limbs have been severed,

ovals gape like barn-owls, or the faces

in Japanese woodblock prints. Our lives

are still that elegant: we peer in the shade

of a boat for fish, or cross an arching bridge.

Slaves to vision, we hunker in the rains

under a mountain blind with snow.

When our lives are nearly over we'll know

that we had loaves and we had fishes:

abundance sprung from the beginning.

Our cells divided, selves departing

from older selves, to multiply

and die. The story of death is already old,

told constantly, and never over. Still,

the world is ornate: swallows bore

into evening, and the owl preens

with its needle-like bill. Iris flutter

in a swale, and the blue camas swell.

Starlings hiss. The suburbs encroach,

and the fields seize up, then relax again

into their old undulations. Above,

the constellations rise, wallowing in the sky.

They linger like bodhisattvas: the scale

of their endeavor baffles us, their figures

scattered and vague. We cherish

their bright departure. We delight in the future

by becoming what it requires. We believe

in the constellations' largess,

in their holy dissolution. We gather

at their burning--so cold to us--and their

all-consuming worship, where time

and distance expire.

In The Mouth of the Western Earth

Thursday, July 1, 2010

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