Memorial Day

                                         (Flanders Field American Cemetery, Waregem, Belgium 2013)

Warrior

Wagoner Higgins watched his chargers:
manes faded to flaxen; sorrel and rust; browns
neither bay nor chestnut, tinged by blood
and sulphur. Beasts turned
to dark magnets of mud and hair.
Their eyes burned blue and amber
through the gas and flame, their bones
formed taut tents of hide beneath the harness.
Battle tested long faced and wise
too much sense to play or shy.
When too scarred, or scared, to go on, they fed
a company’s hunger, those last ounces
of usefulness in soup and stew.

These were brutes who crossed
rivers and canals where bridges failed
drank their fill and then passed through
villages and muddy farms. Not gifts
or special pals, just grunts like everyone else.
Wagoner Higgins rests where Belgium earth
was churned by the war to end all;
we’ve beaten the peace like horseflesh.

Along the playa

Friday May 14th, at Playa

There’s a little fold of darkness cleaning up the last of the stars off the pond. In between it devours whatever insect will feed its minute body. I finally have slowed its movement, its near pattern, to identify bat. Off to the side a duck makes a noise like a stern uncle, a deep tsk, tsk and then, as though on cue, a body splashes into the water, muskrat I say. The sun seems reluctant to rise with so much song, so much movement. In this predawn ring of light and darkness over the pond the sky is mirrored in perfect contour and I grow dizzy trying to remember which way I stand.

The playa smells like France when the tide goes out (sans fish) or France smells like playa in spring (sans coyote scat). The cracked bed of sand and grit and alkali rolls into cups the closer you get to the lake and under each the world is softer and softer until you sink a bit as though everything underneath wants to escape or swallow you.

 

The alkali dries into ribs
& spine, long bones
along the playa
 
just this morning
as I walked as far
as the wet
would allow
 
I saw long lines
of things running
above the water
geese or crane or
something prehistorically older
 
dragon or another
beast lost to myth
& then the whale jaw
whole, reimagined
out of dust
 
surfaced among barb wire
rust & fence posts
covered white

 

Not a seventeen syllable type of town

One of the meanders I took in the past few weeks:

Highway 395 drops south out of Pendleton Oregon and then rolls and climbs and skirts mountains, rivers, and trees, farms and high desert as it moves into Central Oregon. It has been many, many (can we get one more, many? Amen!) years since I was out here. Near so many places we traveled or cut through. As I was getting close to the road that ran to Ukiah, I nearly took a detour to see Ukiah again. One day (in that land of many years ago) I was moving road signs for Dad and as I sat in the pick-up, I noticed the sign telling you how far Ukiah is, but it was in the rearview mirror and it said haikU. And I was thinking today, Ukiah is not a seventeen-syllable type of town, but falls in the English language -ku blend, a very brief nugget of beauty that does not need seventeen syllables to exist.

And now:

Love poem with swallows

The swallows swoop toward the willow, low over the water
and then the female lands, waits, sings a chirpy come hither.

The male dives and hovers over her, she spreads her wings
and welcomes him again and again she waits while he rises
his wings slashing. Their heads meet briefly with each return.

It’s then I miss you, as he dives and returns,
while she opens her arms, again and again.

If the world should end in Ogallala

I have an older poem that starts “If the world should end in Ogallala…” partly because Ogallala always felt to me like a gateway town out there before you leave the West, West or before you reenter it. And I suppose at one time I could have seen myself living there. I’ve always been drawn to Nebraska, especially that portion around I-80 as you leave Wyoming. I stayed the night in Ogallala as I was driving home this past week. I’d gone out to Oregon on May 3rd and spent time with my Mom and visiting with family in various scenarios of out of doors or one or two people indoors. Then I a side trip to visit dear, dear friends before heading to Playa at Summer Lake to write and, as it turned out, sit quietly watching the amazing sky and listening. I pulled into Ogallala just as a storm did and watched a terrific rain wash away the dust and send people scrambling into the feed store behind the hotel.

If the world should end in Ogallala,
let me drift on the Platte

Ogallala was one of the stops for the pony express and you see signs about places to visit to learn more about this short-lived business venture. It made me think, in school we learned about the pony express and how mail was moved in this modern and quick way. I’m pretty sure this 18-month endeavor is taught more widely than slavery or the various genocides that have happened all over these United States of America. If you’re in certain states and school districts you may never hear about them, or never hear about them in ways that are straightforward and true.

If the world should end in Ogallala,
let me drift on the Platte
until I wash up away from you.

I need to go to a place a heart can relax, freeze-dried and still.
Where daylight presses down in two equal commodities
too much and not enough. All the extreme I can handle.

Of course, I spent a good portion of the drive thinking about the events of January 6, which are already being white-washed and turned into the myth of “nothing happened”, but it shouldn’t be surprising that the makers of this new myth are the same makers of the old myth and, in fact, are the keepers of lies and myths.

If the world should end in Ogallala,
let me drift on the Platte
until I wash up away from you.

I need to go to a place a heart can relax, freeze-dried and still.
Where daylight presses down in two equal commodities
too much and not enough. All the extreme I can handle.

I’ll leave you on the plains, where the hills rise like knuckles
at rest, and the horizon never moves closer than the promises we kept.

That sky and the art titled Black Rock Diamond by Rick Asay and Rebecca Davis (2014) on the lakebed just down from the pond. (That sky!)

Bright things are happening

I planted my lone raised bed today, well, I transplanted some sunflowers and then crazily overseeded cosmos from the seeds I harvested last year. I thought I had zinnia seeds to plant but then remembered I let the gold finches have them. I’m not planting anything in my neighbors raised beds as they are moving and the house is for sale; it’s just easier than playing what if. I’m sure if the beds aren’t touched tomatoes and cosmos and zinnias will come up on their own, so there is that. We’ll see. My neighbor said they’d be out of the house by June, (they rent) which is too bad. They won’t be trying to buy the house, which is too bad also, but the market here is so overheated and it’s out of their range. We’ve been very lucky with neighbors so far, everyone is quiet and friendly, but it always feels like that neighbor is just waiting to arrive put out the lawn jockey and the rebel flag and let their dog crap on your sidewalk and their teens scowl at you. (Have I just cursed us?)

 A poetry month prompt response:

The light is bright from the sliver of moon
this morning. We begin by following the old path
the one covered in stone before it turns to regular
suburbia: asphalt, concrete, non-native plants,
and lawns coiffed to perfection. Nothing newsworthy.
Behind the dark windows the days start the same
but those of us out here in the predawn are joining
in song with the ginger cardinal as she calls to beckon
the sun, read all about it she cries, bright things are happening.