Learning The Salmon Upstream To Spawn \ Habitat

Alan: Debris packed up under the bridge.  Just below, crowds of fish, unable to ascend.  We worked to free the blockage, then followed for hours as they struggled upward until we could straddle the stream and there was hardly water enough to cover their gleaming backs.

Learning The Salmon Upstream To Spawn

Simply, fish:

your own metaphor.

Fleshed energy

worn by, clothed in the sinews of flood.

Bubble of strength

deceive:

dissolve in rapids, rise with backwash,

advance beyond powers.

Energy locked up from pool to pool.

Stretch entropy with instinct –

give all away but an anchored spark.

Alive: organized potential.

Failure brings death.

Fulfillment: death.

And so all futures grow within you.

Alone in infinite effort,

there is no past.

You are the stream,

flowing out, swimming in

the same.

Through drought and falling, 

spill

meteors in another rain.

Nancy: When I saw the picture – the caption – my mind rejected their juxtaposition; if this isn’t a poem, read it as a cry of disbelief and outrage.

Habitat

          I

before

and after

in full color aerial views

we don’t do this anymore

dusty ripped bare shattered bombscape

we’ve changed, we’re practicing

new forestry

(see second illustration)

we care

about the environment

we’re sensitive

to your concerns

and sure enough in the second example

right there near the edge of the photo

islanded in the

dusty ripped bare shattered bombscape

are three

sequoias

“providing habitat”

          II

what I see is

three trees standing

what I hear

is silence

a sound fainter than one hand clapping

no bone trill blood sap song

all that was  /  and is not

habitat

three dusty trees

habitat

an empty sky

habitat

thirst, an ocean of thirst

habitat

“Learning The Salmon Upstream To Spawn” first appeared in the Swarthmore College Bulletin.

Daigu \ The Bike And The Pole

Alan:  As a young man, before renouncing the world, Ryokan had a reputation in his village as quite the Don Juan.

Daigu

Once I was known as the Bull of Echigo:

“Semen” my middle name.

Then I saw where it led:

clinging and suffering,

illness, old age, decay and death.

Now I couldn’t get it up if I wanted –

and where are those ripe young girls? –

bones, or shriveled beyond caring.

Wouldn’t they howl to see my little limp prick,

whose eyes once grew wide and eager at the sight of me?

Still, there are times, now and then, recalling those days,

I might be tempted to trade my wisdom

for one more night of deluded youth!

Daigu: “Great Fool,” part of Ryokan’s Zen name.

Nancy: April is mud and peepers, high water and fishermen.  When I saw the bike I could have predicted – yes – down the rain-slicked bank a kid with a fishing pole and hope.

The Bike and the Pole

The bike and the pole

and the drizzle and the memory

of the mud and the careless slide

and the old tree and the seat

of a trunk and a curve

and a branch and the way

you could stand at the water's edge

not you, this was my edge

my tree my memory my tangle of line

but it will be his memory too

because past the bike I can look

down the bank and see a head

tawny blond boy head

and I remember what it was like

the impatience even though

in a month this will all be green

but it's April and surely the fish

will be there waiting for me

just past the mud

the tree the curve and shelter

of my seat in the trunk of the tree

Nazeing, Essex \ High Balling Wind

Alan: At the center of great commotion, a stillness.

Nazeing, Essex

The blackthorn

burst of white on black

scratching, scratching itself in the wind.

Towards the Lea,

on the sheltered south slope

below the copse,

bee skeps.

Near, through the gated hedge,

gleaming white

headstones.

Nancy: What else would a railroad man’s daughter compare the wind to?  It’s spring – the wind blows whoooee.

High Balling Wind

This wind’s traveling.  This wind’s moving

on a long grade.

If you could hop this wind

wouldn’t you fly . . .

But you can’t catch this wind.

It’s got a heavy load; it’s full of winter

and it’s headed out.

I heard that whistle, and I went out

to see.  Yes, this wind’s blowing

a clear track.  This wind’s blowing

stand aside, coming through . . .

No, you can’t catch this wind,

it’s wailing high ball,

right through town.  This is a freight train

wind; it makes my feet itch,

but I can’t catch it – stand back –

it’s high balling right through town.

Whoooee . . . stand aside, coming through,

this wind.

Old Men Talking \ The Bitter Herbs Of Spring

Alan: Growing up in a family of four brothers, suddenly losing the youngest left the rest of us adrift on a sea of what-ifs and never-will-be’s, incomplete futures and ever-questioned pasts.

Old Men Talking

                                      In memoriam, DLB

Under the ramada the old men sit,

in the shade, holding tall drinks.

Wearing broad-brimmed hats, they gather

each hot, still morning, clicking the ice and sipping

while the children dance in and out of the shade and sun –

the grandchildren or great-grandchildren, grand-nieces and -nephews

or great-grand-nieces and great-grand-nephews, it does not matter.

The children play; the men sip their drinks and talk.

In the shade of the ramada, gray-green in the deeper shade

of the great paloverde, the men look out

at the dusty heat and blink.  They talk quietly,

with pauses, with many relaxed silences,

finishing each others' thoughts,

nodding at the start of some old story

that may or may not be concluded.

I envision and envy us as these ancients,

creviced as the garden walls which surround the ramada.

We have long since transferred our faith to the young,

retreated to the telling and re-telling of

old stories.  Under the ramada

that you built, one person is missing

and that is the builder, which is why

however I think this or want it, the tales

are always yours.  We are left living your stories

in ways none of us could have foreseen or imagined.

Nancy: I often wonder how many Americans eat the foods of my early childhood.  My mother and grandmother ate the coarse corncakes and dandelion greens dressed in hot vinegar and appeared to like them.  If I ate one corncake and the greens, I might get a spoonful of molasses on the second cake.

The Bitter Herbs Of Spring

I reject the bitter herbs of spring,

the greens from Granny's basket,

ragged leaves dressed in hot vinegar.

Not mesclun, no, not oils from some

named grove, not raspberry vinaigrette.

Sharp toothed first green of the meadow.

I learned how to dig.  I learned mother

of vinegar.  I learned how to temper

bitter with corncakes fried in saved fats.

But then, when I dug alongside

Granny, when I crawled on stubble or

old meadow and dug . . . . .

then is not now.  Now that I am as

old as Methuselah, now that my no

is my no, I reject the bitter herbs of spring!

Tycho And Skeeter \ Beginning With A Word For Spring

Alan: The little dog – never as much as three pounds in weight – came into our lives unexpectedly and left unexpectedly, a victim of melamine-tainted dog food.  In between, he owned our house and hearts.

Tycho And Skeeter

The old dog

looks for the young dog

in all the best places –

around the corner of the room,

under the desk where we kept his crate,

the half-secret daytime

lying-up places

under the chairs –

so small

he must be somewhere.

Like me

missing something essential –

glasses, car keys –

he goes back

and back again

having no other choice.

Ten days

and he has not forgotten

even as, surely, the scent

fades and we, the strange

ones on two legs, who talk

and talk and sometimes

rub our eyes,

have given up

and have shown ourselves

less masterful

than we all supposed.

Nancy:  What sort of word would: the dumping of contaminated spoil on a coral reef – the opening of a dam to bring life to an estuary – the creation of harbors with atomic explosives – be?  Gender roles may have lost their rigidity, but are there still stone mindsets and green dream mindsets?

Beginning With A Word For Spring

With a great noise the ice broke and turned

and the water flowed.

This had happened before,

and because it had happened before,

it had a word.

Tonight at the fire, Walks With A Limp spoke the word,

and said that when the sun reached here,

on the wall,

we would move.

The women knew the word,

for them it was like a pod, they opened it

and looked in their minds at what it held.

They saw the south facing slopes;

there, green things grew, and the people fed,

it had always been so.

Soon the animals would pass, walking their old trails,

the females heavy with the young of the year.

It had always been so.

The women murmured together, gathering cords and skin bags.

Soon they would move; there was a word for the green place,

and when the time of sweet foods came

there would be a word for that too.

No one alive could remember when it had not been so.

       Walks With A Limp sat by the fire

       and the other men sat with him.

       As they came to know the world, they were frightened

       by its simplicity.

       Although many things had words, the words were not stones,

       the words were not throwing sticks.

       They spoke together of their fears.

       Tonight there was a new word.

       The men said that it was a thing that had come before,

       but we had not looked at it.

       Now it had a word and it would belong to the men;

       it was a stone word, a throwing stick word.

       They said the word, and with their fingers

       and red paint, made a mark on the wall

       where the sun must come.

The moving time came, and the greens eating time,

and the young of the year were dropped.

The fish came and the women splashed and laughed;

the days passed as they had always done.

The fire was only an eye in the night,

not a warming place.  The women spoke a word,

and helped one another to cut meat to lay in the sun,

and tested the milky grains with their teeth.

Slowly the grasses bent as they had always done.

       But the men sat more and more often by the fire,

       apart from the women.  Their word had not healed the fears,

       but had given them new words.  Everywhere they looked,

       they saw that the world needed a stone word.

       Tonight the women must hide.

       They must not touch the throwing sticks or the bone whistles.

       They must not look on the men,

       who shine in the firelight and shake their antlers.

       Tonight the men say the words that will make the bulls fat,

       and the grain swell; they shake rattles

       and say the words that will make the sun obey.

The does come heavy with young, and the kernels ripen

as they have always done.  The sun obeys.

But was there a time when the world in its simplicity

was not ruled by bargains between the men

and the gods they had shaped with their stone words?

Perhaps.  The women speak of such things sometimes, quietly,

when they talk of dreams, and the play of children.