My horse was a willow

Well, a lot of walking the perimeter in Enterprise. But this is a tree I’ve passed by twice in the last two days. It’s in front of a house we lived in before we moved to Joseph. The land behind the property is now Wallowa County Nursery, when we lived there it was a pasture. So just this poem written about this tree a few years ago (the prompt was willow) and a historic event.

(And a lovely meeting today in Joseph with a favorite poet/teacher/fisherman/new dad. How we meet and re-meet our poet friends is a wonder.)

Ignite

My horse was a willow
that stood tethered by roots
in the gentle curve of our driveway
just across the railroad tracks.
I rode each day, my reins and stirrups adjusted
in the baling twine. The low branch, as wide
and round as a Percheron, carried me. My racehorse
or bronc, hunter and cow horse.
I galloped as log trucks and cattle trailers
rattled past, guiding my sure foot
along cliffs and desert dunes.

The night the Grain Growers exploded
like the Leonid Storm, the burning wheat
falling over the surrounding farms
and fuel depot, my father ran to call Uncle Pat,
divined ways to get us away from the blast
that would plow down our road.

I sat on my steed its gray and silver mane
picking up the flames, imagined sorrel,
and began to whip the flank
tucked myself tight over the hard bark
shoulders and loosened reins
willing a run that would save us all
from the fire.

Here now

Today I was out walking in this small town. The town where I was born, a place we lived until I was six (before moving to New Mexico and Colorado) and then returned to a few years later. Staying until I was eleven, when we moved to Joseph. There are many houses around the town we lived in or had friends, relatives, places I walk past that have memories. One corner a woman had a parrot, not a friendly parrot, but she let us talk to it. On another a retired teacher who read us books. The library was just a few blocks away from some of the houses, in another we had to ride our bikes to get there.

I learned to swim at the pool, beside the city park. I used to go to the park at night, years later in my cape and swing and swing and swing. Today I did a quick turn on the swings and then walked up the little hill; the pool a dead spot in the grass, long gone. I walked down past the fairgrounds, there are some little places that way with horses around them, the scent of old hay and mud and horse and manure still a nostalgic aroma. Deer wander all over, nibbling lawns, watching me with careful stares. When I return to my mother’s house all of the neighbor’s chickens are feasting on the lawn, their dogs in the chicken yard doing what dogs do, eating things.

I talked to a man who had worked with my dad, whose children I once babysat, who I last saw three years ago when he helped my parent’s move to this place right before my dad passed away. He told me about a road trip he took with his parents and siblings and grandmother in the late 1950’s, a six-week trip through Texas and Missouri, Wyoming and Iowa. “Let me tell you,” he said, “that’s a long way to go with your grandma.”

Here's a poem from today and some pictures of this randomness.

                                     

Here now the hill
raced down on bikes
its steepness conquered
by our trusted brakes, our balance.
Here now the small downtown.
It seems a full third
of the buildings boarded
up or under renovation.
Here now the old market
local owned and loved.
Here now the library,
the courthouse denuded
of pines. The bookstore
that opens at 7:30 AM!
The former Safeway;
the former butcher shop;
the former steakhouse;
bar; 24-hour café; drug store
all gone. Here now the reformed
curve that leads to Hurricane Creek,
Joseph, the lake. Here now
all the houses on the streets
where we walked and rode,
skipped and ran, under
the mountain’s watch.

Leave your wishes

The mountains have taken a day

off they’ve pulled the clouds tight
over their shoulders and closed

their door. Come back tomorrow
or later in the week, I’m bingeing
on falling snow, I’m collecting ice
where so little has been, I’m saving
any words for the birds and trees
I’m thinking that the Earth’s turn
has been premature. Leave your wishes
at the timberline, I’ll feel better soon.

The day lightens and then lightens more

Overnight the trees bloom
monochrome blossom, soft down.
& the birds are silent this dawn
yesterday’s sun & activity
ushering in this morning.
Quiet & rest. The snow
still sifting down, heavy
with water & promise.

Along the pond the only sounds are ducks plunging under water and then popping back up; the puddled softness of snow falling into the water from the overhanging branches. A snowy pond music, a mid-April melody. The day lightens and then lightens more. I make the first human trail. I see goose tracks, a rabbit, something went under the snow across the path and their tunnel has since collapsed. Bird tracks everywhere: how do I read these notes?

The snow is so wet, heavy, melting everywhere (in the back of my mind, please don’t freeze – don’t get colder) a steady stream of water off the lodge roof; at my cabin, I could hear the snow compressing, crashing down.

It is quiet off the lakebed (how many times have I written quiet this week?) the view limited. An insect lands on a bare stalk of yellow grass, “Careful,” I warn, “the swallows are out.” As if on cue a hawk on the willow flinches as it is dive bombed by a bold swallow. It shrugs off the attack like the snow on its feathers.

The clouds rise. The far ridge can be seen still holding a shawl of cloud over its shoulders but clearing above. The lakebed visible again. It is eight o’clock. This weather is only a needed pause.

It is Saturday, the 16th of April. Miles away, thousands, in another country, another time zone, another wide place, my baby girl, my Bambina, our lovely and loved daughter is getting married. Their wedding day, like her life the way she wanted it, they. It’s as though the snow brought such perfect silence so I could lean into the world and almost hear their voices. That simple promise, “I do”.

The world transfixed

Yesterday at the far edge of the lakebed, in the afternoon, dust was rising, miles away, higher and higher. How was it possible that when it is so wet here, and that side had gotten just as much snow? But, then too, this morning I walked out nearly as far as the water, all the snow gone, (it had been too wet to walk on at all yesterday) but what wasn’t dry was also hard with cold. I kept going until it was goopy. I stood and turned, sinking into the mud. Winter Ridge still with snow, some trees full too; tall and white against the blue.

The moon was out before sundown last evening. Mocking the melted snow that had accumulated wherever the sun did not touch. Mocking too the sun, I think. Beautiful in the now clearing sky. And last night, this morning, one a.m., I stepped out again to see it shining brightly, the night sky pale, the pond glowing, stars hiding their faces. I stood and listened. Nothing was making a sound, everything in the world was transfixed by the moon’s face.

Here's an older poem about the moon in a way:

Russia won’t rule out nuclear weapons

This sad heart, the moon goes quickly

to wane as though she can’t turn

her full face quickly enough away

from the earth.


A few life cycles of orbit

& tides she must forget.

How often she had lingered

into the daylight, her presence

a walk of shame for all to see.

How she shudders now

for ever having loved this world.

Hieroglyphic messages

Yesterday, the lake was half-size. Dust and clouds and snow creating the optical illusion that only a thin line of water existed. This morning with the wind’s rest, the lake is full and wide and full of shimmer. In the sun, with more blue sky than not, I was pelted with snow as I walked the lakebed. Winter Ridge has fresh snow, but not much and less than yesterday.

One always wonders if a place that you love can ever get better. I mean sure the views, the quiet, the birds, the views, the stars, the focus, the ease, the views that’s why I come. But is that all, says one so fortunate. This year there are Turkey Vultures roosting in the trees outside the lodge. Hard not to say things just got a lot better. I wander over in the evening to look at them, they’re like, great, tourists. But they are wonderous. And more polite than the flicker that has been peeping in my window. I think he’s actually just admiring himself in the reflection and occasionally practicing dance moves. If I was that beautiful, I’d appreciate me too.

Here's a weak hand poem from the weekend:

At daybreak, literally as sun rises
over the spine of mountain
I’m on the Playa; on the cracked
surface run through with a thousand
small notes from rain, wind, coyote,
bird: whatever is blown or walks
or flies, writes something here.
Water rises and falls leaving hieroglyphic
messages as it seeps away, evaporates,
leaves the West.

Needing the West

While driving from Elko, full of gratefulness after spending the night with a friend at her lovely, lovely home but feeling a little tired, a little headache-y, (the fourth day of driving catching up with me) I thought (even as the sky expanded and exhaled light) am I done with the West? And then I was suddenly back into pines and wide meadows and extra sky, and I stepped on the Playa at sundown and the heat that it had absorbed all day pushed back at me, like a lover’s embrace. I shook off that feeling with a laugh. I am not done with the West (the same way I am not done with Rome or Paris) or those small towns that dot the way from there to here. The ones that sit like comfort on the tongue, Plush, Adel, Paisley even the wild buck of Winnemucca. Coming out of Humboldt County Nevada into Oregon on the Warner Highway I stop and took a picture of the Welcome to Oregon sign. Twenty years ago, when Jerry retired, we came this way as we headed to Klamath Falls. We stopped at this sign and took a picture. Issac was eleven, Justine would have been nine. The day must have been as warm yesterday because they were in short sleeves and shorts. Jerry is in the background, hamming it up.

When I realized the other morning as I was driving (that I would be going that route) I nearly had to pull the car over and cry. Twenty years. Twenty years. I may have just been full of history and longing as I had been listening to Warlight by Michael Ondaatje for the past few days as I drove. I kept playing the last chapters starting from The Street of the Small Daggers, I’ve read the book twice and I’ve read this section more than twice and now I’ve listened to it at least seven times. It feels like a writing class is happening as you read/listen: this is how it’s done. It’s the same way I feel whenever I reread the Molly Gloss story Lambing Season: this is how it is done. It’s how you get so caught in the story and scene and character that you forget you are not in it, of it. I’m sure there’s some scientific term that would explain why this happens, how; for me it is just magic.

So, I am here at Playa for a few days watching the lakebed and the light, the birds and the light, the sky and the dust and the shimmer of water in the light. I’m not looking for comfort or rest. I’m looking for good writing, I’m searching for magic.

Here’s a poem from yesterday morning before I got into my car for one more day’s drive:

Behind me is a dog not mine.
A fire in front – not mine a well –
a window filled with mountain views.
The sky becoming daylight.
After a day’s journey, I journey
once more, into a day
that will be filled with sun
and Spring heat. When I arrive
in late afternoon I will walk
once more upon the Playa
under the great open sky
and sort my thoughts
for the work I must do.

Church

Quiet and quiet still

Under the pine I build the altar
leave a prayer for something wild,
leave an offering, listen for the first
star, say goodnight to the birds
set the camera on the soft needles
of the pine hoping to catch a god,
a night dwelling sprite or just a hungry,
being wandering through the yard.

Then six pictures (and in five shots) close and closer
and then just to the edge clearly: the fox.
Accepting the offering, sharing the darkness
with the ghost house and the streetlight.
The quiet night quiet still. Offering accepted.
Prayer answered. And then, the sixth picture
the last, the night dwelling sprite, her mask and
ringtail prominent, too late for the snack
desecrating the altar, knocking the camera
down, no worship here.