Category: Uncategorized

Snow creek, camas creek
Creek of cottonwoods, place of rushing water

The snow has not come this year
Camas long vanished, the wheatfield bare
In the warm December rain

Cottonwood roots delve the
Height of a man, seeking water
And when the water table drops they die
And stand awhile tall and white 

Bleaching in the sun and the wind
The two forces before us
The two forces after us 
The two forces that will shape this land 
After wheatfields, after the towns

Already drying like tumbleweeds
As the wind loosens the root
Half empty as the people drift away
Or huddle playing cards in the only coffeeshop

Place of the wild geese
Place of good intentions
Where are your snows?
Where are your vanished camas?
Creek of drying cottonwoods, creek of silent waters.

In a dream, a voice saying:
Sound of water, water from the spring,
The voice of angels, sound of water 
Soul of water, water from the burn, the loch, the muir
Angels all around me the wise man says
Sound of water voice of angels
Water messages
In a dream dreaming by the sea loch 
Clear water golden water
Black pool in the granite 
White foam churned by the wave.

Black ships on the beaches of Troy
Njal’s family burning around him
Doomed raids on the old fortress
A rebel waltz bereft of joy
Manhattan has not fallen
Our weapons rust and tarnish
Gordon Kaufmann’s glorious temples
To the gods of concrete, dynamo, and steel
Crumble before our indecision
While we waver at the thought of return.

On old farms long given as bounties
We will not sit royally, not long.
Kale and cat-tail, nuts and berries
Sustain us once again
Come salmon, come seaweed
Always throng our streams
Always cover the beach by our place
Make us rich in the treasures of poverty
Bring the dance to life
Bring this life to the dance
While we admire the lovely dancer.

In the breaking dawn of this wintry day
Tired of talking the snow
Singing the hoar frost clinging to branches
Dazzling blue-white light leaped skyward
As I gazed, wonder-struck out the glass door
Leaped skyward and faded,
Came again and again
As the transformer shorted and burned on 
The lonely pole across the frozen wheatfield
My own personal supernova omen
Early morning apparition to warn 
Of the impending day, as white clouds
Cover the moon.

I’m tired of the cold, tired of feeling old
I’d rather write one of MacDiarmid’s
Long rambling plagiaristic rants
Copy pop song lyrics into a high school notebook
Make poetry slam witticisms, light as thistledown
Sentimental as the moon, piquant as dinner
In a trendy restaurant. 

Nothing holds us here among these
Camas-haunted wheatfields
Nothing but springtime’s biding,
Schoolbooks, and money.

I pray that our fleeing is not in winter, 
Not in summer’s heat, pedaling 
Borrowed bicycle far from water.
May we make our journey in springtime
Flowers springing around our feet
Dainties for the horses
Or in autumn’s crisp clean air
Resting under golden falling leaves
Weather perfect for walking.

Silver friend
I’m sorry to always moan
About dim dreich cabins
Rock built in your wide caress
You’re no misery grisly grown – 
But glabrous glamourous perfume
To my eye
Fringed golden silver
Bent noble grove where no tree else
Moonlight flame above the draw
Wormwood of old fools
They do not know the heaven scent 
Of your crushed branches
Though it fills the air in protest
As they drag battleship chains
Rattling through your embrace
Have they slept in your welcome bed
At the end of long days?
Where the deer make their hide
Where the quail hide their young
Have they filled their heart with holy crackling clean 
Heat bursting with mountain mahogany
Purple flames as the smoke dogs curl around their legs?
But my poor one note song is always of our loss – 
Hold on silver friend against fire, poison, bulldozer power
That would sweep you away and leave us,
In place of your holy incense,
Wheatfield and cheatgrass.
I would trade all those French fries and onion rings
For the taste of your bitter bite, a crust of alkali wildness
Poached from the Land of the Big Idea. 

Restless in the wizardly quartz screen glow
Mind teeming with vague notions
Drowned worlds, dead oceans
The sound machine roar covers
Footsteps of the cat
Wordless wailing of lost children
Incriminations of a mind soured and drawn
No stone on my belly the sacred words to anchor
But the booze and junk food 
Seethe and roil
Heave and rumble
Lurch and thrawn

Half dreams of blood and oil
Scramble through long eons ‘til the dawn
Breaks the sky.
Here we sit at the edge of the 
Edge of the dead wheatfield of the world 
This is where the dream ran out 
Where the exiles learned the limits of wishful thinking
Of a better job, new life, new car
Faithful friend’s unfaithful wife
Vanished grandmother’s kitchen
Dancing stilled in the blue glow
Singing hushed, drawing smeared, poems incomprehensible. 
Sound of guns rattling from the school
Pain pills, plastic titties, hopeless screwing
Captured joyless on the screen
Remote control toys watch endlessly from the sky
Rain death upon the wedding.
Bread drenched in poison
Sky smeared with smoke synthetic
Mother’s milk from the machine.

All day the buttery wind 
Blows away the snow
All the triumphant lies
That tell us what we know
The quail, little chickens,
Come for seeds we scatter.
Under the ice, ground warms
While we wait for spring
Wait for planting
Wait for flowers
Look to harvest
Look for things we scarcely know
Wait the waitings of our kind
Scratch for seeds beneath the snow.

The road is narrow, bordered with barley
The cars are fast, flashing headlights
No patience for tiddlers searching for history
The tyres are thin
The track is stony
The route is predestined (Oh, rich despair)
Oncoming traffic in middle of road
A score of car slaughtered grouse
Along the motorways’ heathery shoulder
Hills emptied of houses, furrows of old fields,
Flowery invaders crowd the highlands
Food for dinosaurs, legacy of German botanists
But no nineteenth century tour, this
modern quest is low on petrol
And at the farmstand in Fife
I scare an old man in a Vauxhall
Driving the wrong side
His eyes tell the story, brought together on 
Our doubly predestined trajectory over all those miles of wandering
Hurtling mad through roundabouts of industrial estates
Dancing contrarywise with lorries
The rope dance of single track through faery woods
Hurtling down concrete terror chute
Stop for Urqhhart’s shoving Germans 
Tesco tiger roll Nessie sandwich
Our hosts are appalled at the distances we relate
In our dusty land across the water
Where road is narrow, bordered with wheatfields
Where we drive seven hundred miles in a day
Always looking for something new
Eyes scanning the horizon for the pillar of fire and smoke
The new job, new car, a new house, new shoes,  the next big thing
Land of Opportunity, Land of Promise
Only a railroad ticket away, sagebrush streaming past the window,
or three month’s walk, or we can get there Wednesday
If we push it and the fuel pump holds.
What will you find there?
Old orchards full of dying trees
An old house with broken windows
The dry well, tattered posters from country fairs that will never come again
Vague memories of the world that was
Fear of the wind that is coming
Comfort in love, and friendship in despite.

Two ravens -  
One silent facing south
Toward a poisoned land
Land of unfulfilled dreams
The other, massive bill
Clacking, feathers raised along 
Its crest, looks north
Looks toward a place
That might yet be
Unreal country
The dead horse, human kind,
The strangled river
Sits in the middle
Suspended animation
Neither fond memory
Nor bold plan
But a space of stillness
This moment building into power.

Round river boulder of the past
Heavy gray granite of history
I claw at you, fingernails 
Scrabbling for purchase, shoulder
Straining to keep you encircled 
In my grasp, palms pressing 
Rugosities friction heaving the weight
Past my knees.

Why lift this heavy stone?
This smooth stone of history best 
Perhaps to let it lie forgotten in the willows
By the dark river

I lift it because it is the stone
Of my heart, unfading realization
Wordless in the pit of my stomach
Sense of belonging to a wronged people
Refusal to take the thin soup
And forget.

I lift the stone because to let it lie
Forgotten in the willows
Is to lose my own life, to be lost
Forever to my people, to forget
Is to forsake the solemn dignity 
Of a stolen past.

I lift the stone because of the anger
In my heart, rage in my head and heart
Driving me relentless to clear away
Spoils of burned houses, abandoned
False dreams like old cars on the side
Of a scabland road, twisted roots of lies,
Rocks of hate clogging the life-springs of my people.

My people! Atavistic phrase, worrying
Politicians and historians, raising visions
Of new nations perpetuating old wrongs
But hot-headed I proclaim that there was
Nothing but the general human condition
To be ashamed of in our stolen past
Much to love, much to mourn

And the time when the big city taxi driver 
Threw the Nova Scotia boatbuilder out of the cab
When, accustomed to the open air, 
The git spat his chaw full on the 
San Francisco isinglass window 
And his kids with their mismatched shoes
To walk across foggy hills.

Let sadness follow upon sadness,
Song follow on song, stone rest upon stone.

New Scotland waiting to be born
These letters are for you, my love
To you, country of the empty mountains
Land of abandonment, I sing for you in exile
Your sky slashing sgurrs
golden days on silver beaches
Stir my heart
Ancient oak woods of my soul -
Fallen strength filling memory. 
From far away in a hard white land
Far, very far, from the song of your 
Waves and eternal wind
I send you an exile’s fanatic love.
I sing you dreams of republic and a hundred
Thousand farms, long vanished, alive still
Under the stones of old crofts
Burning still under the dark water
Singing still in the buttery wind 
That shakes the end of your long winter
All the desperate hopes of this dwindling age
Come to fruition on your bracken yellow hills
Alba nuadh, new Scotland of my heart, 
Waiting to be born.