
Waiting for the Sunrise

Cathy Smith

Published by Cathy Smith, 2017.
While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

WAITING FOR THE SUNRISE

**First edition. September 16, 2017.**

Copyright (C) 2017 Cathy Smith.

ISBN: 978-1386456926

Written by Cathy Smith.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Also by Cathy Smith

Beautiful Dreamer Short Stories

Hidden Treasures: Short Stories

Standalone

Waiting for the Sunrise

Watch for more at Cathy Smith's site.

#

**_For the amazing people I met on my many journeys...and for the trees, sparrows, dolphin and pelicans that made my day. And, of course, Emma Helen Tuchfeld-Gimbel, the poet of the family. She came first, and then there was me._**
All text and photographs in Apple Cider & Wishes on the Edge of Time Copyright (C) 2016 Cathy Smith

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from the author, except in the form of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Any unauthorized usage of the text without express written permission of the author/publisher is a violation of the author's copyright and is illegal and punishable by law.

# Contents

Apple Cider Journal #1

Green rain

Unspun wool

fresh green apples

In the forest

Candy faces

My large window

And rainbows

The center of the earth

The green grass

Big yellow sunflowers

The wide blue sky

Green shoots

We drank tea from wooden cups covered in birch bark

The crown of a hat

The cat

It is towards evening

A grizzly bear day

The ground is thick with leaves

At the beach

I found a beach in France

Still asleep (still asleep in bed)

This same old fence

Constantly reminding me

Dried paint

The bathhouse

Every little grain of sand

The flowers in the dark

Shirayama (white mountain)

The ocean

We went sailing

The shadows on the beach

The flowers that were set on the table

A river: the story of the Buddha

Three wishes

Once I wondered

Right around the corner

Friends

Waiting for the afternoon

Dreamland

Two rooms

Visible underground

Springtime

A long cold night

It was a dry winter

Sweet corn

Laz-E-Girl

We have two plants in the house

There's someone downstairs playing a guitar

India tea

I heard a blue jay call

Wishes on the Edge of Time: Poetry Journal #2

PART ONE: Summer

In the summer

Lightning

The junction tree

The painted desert

Just enough

This summer

In the middle of summer

A poet's day

The sound

Letter from a beachcomber

Santa Monica beach

Flowers

reflection

Jones, Georgia

Southern California

The rain

On the way to San Diego

Rain

PART TWO: Winter

it will be towards morning

Winter this year

One deep promise

Without doubt

It was too cold to remember

Leaves

Four miles to the grocery store

coming home

The place

Signs

Books

May

Purple lilacs

The train

PART THREE: My Travel Journal 1993-2015

The Beginning & The End

On the way from Boston:

Tecumseh, Missouri

The Florida Everglades

About a walk on the beach

2000 Ketchikan, Alaska

About the Author

Other Books by This Author

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# Apple Cider Journal #1

(Photograph--n. Maine, my back yard)

|  |

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# Green rain

ONE RAINDROP AT A TIME

began to fall on

a leaf bouncing it up

and down.

I was sitting underneath

the foliage in the rain

watching the rivulets

trace new streams down

through the moss and

small plants and

green ferns.

I shivered

from the cold rain.

The arms of the forest

formed a secret

umbrella dancing

like leafy

piano keys playing

simultaneously

and also

bowing singly

over my head.

With

wet, green fingers

the lush downfall became

invisible

in its connection with

the player piano

leaves, which

appeared above--

all at once--high across

the upper boughs

of the waving branches

of a large pine tree.

Leaves fell in the wind

and stuck on

the tree trunk above me like

the little green

fingers

of a toad.

(Bank of the Charles River in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA)

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# Unspun wool

AFTER THE RAIN

I wandered

from hill to

hill there was

 no one there.

Every flower was

fresh, strong and

milky, as if the stems

were drinking from the moist

green earth.

The grass sprang up

behind my footsteps

undamaged by the

slight pressure of

my passage. I walked

until I could see

nothing but the cloudy,

stretching, bathed,

naked and blue

sky.

The clouds had

wrung themselves

dry

of moisture

and were

gathered

together into

silky spools as if they

had just been spun

on a spinning

wheel.

The stretching azure

was vast and empty

except

for some sparsely scattered

unspun bunches of vapor--

soon being wheeled

across the wild air

into thin, wispy

thread.

(Green apples in the Central Square Food Co-op, Cambridge, MA)

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# fresh green apples

(OR WHAT TO DO WITH Too Many Apples & Blueberries)

Fresh green apples and blueberries,

sweet and tart--

My gingerbread

recipe:

Any kind of wild

berry,

(especially wild raspberries,

sweet and tart) combined with

whole wheat and ginger.

Also consider adding:

blueberries,

sweet and tart, and

tart green apples

for pies

with crisscrossed crust,

too bubbly,

stickily bubbly

when they are hot ...

cooking in the oven.

Apple syrup with crisped

apple peel edges.

Burning my fingers

right through

the thick patterned

mitten-shaped potholders

in my full-length

ruffled apron with the pocket.

Served up hot

on the kitchen table

with the smooth white

linen tablecloth ironed into

exactly eight

sharp-creased squares:

four on one

side four on

the other.

Fresh milk with

apple cookies,

apple sauce,

wild cranberry sauce,

blackberry jam,

apple butter,

baked green apples and

apple pancakes.

Dried apples carved

into wooden faces,

strings of cranberry necklaces,

(pearly cranberry necklaces) with berries like

red diver's pearls tied

with cotton string ties

for springtime, fall and

summertime gatherings hidden in

flowering tree groves,

in blueberry patches,

in mossy bogs--

looking for

the empty shells of robin's eggs--

blue speckled

robin's eggs--we put whatever

broken shards we find

(and sometimes

whole empty shells)

on the windowsill.

Next to a candle is

a falcon's feather

and carved wrinkled

apples with

scrap-cloth dresses and

gingerbread-style faces,

spiced apple faces with

raisin-button eyes,

raisin-button smiles,

paper hats,

painted noses

and homemade dimples.

Apple

dumplings tonight. The

dried apple dolls keep

on smiling with their

honey drop eyes,

yarn hair and

peppermint red

dresses:

zig-zag

gum-wrapper arms

outstretched

for a big baby-hug,

with big fake red

lips puckered up

saying "kiss me".

That night 'round nine or

nine-thirty we ate

juicy slices of dumpling with

our fingers, sucking

out the boiling juice

when it cooled,

wearing cranberry necklaces

and showing them

off--using every single

cotton ruffled apron

that we had.

(Fresh green apples),

porcelain-enameled metal tables

and checked

table clothes filled with

four hot apple and blueberry pies--

three big ones

and a smaller one

thick covered wide-brimmed

crust and toothpick marks.

"A" for apple.

"B" for blueberry. I like my slice

a la mode with heavy

whipped cream. Making my

own whipped cream while I cook,

I slide it along the side of

a heavy crock bowl,

taking lazy peeks

into the oven.

Too soon.

Just in time,

before it got burnt.

Burnt my fingers again. The

lazy whipped cream peaks

as I am dreaming about

marshmallow clouds over the

minty lemon sunshine.

The whipped cream

should not be allowed

to turn into butter.

Ginger,

cinnamon,

allspice,

hot

apple

cider.

(photograph--n. Maine, my back yard)

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# In the forest

--------

NEAR

the

forest in a field

staring wide-eyed still

soundlessly

deer, sshhh.

I stand next to the river.

The water is a window. I can

see the fish

all the way to the

bottom of any of the streams

that run off down into

the hills. Throughout the

summer growing season

the Ginkgo, Oak, Elm, Spruce

and Cedar--Chestnuts and

Persimmon start to spread. And the

strange Sycamore trees.

Needles and leaves are scattered

upon the ground, thick as a

carpet.

There is the heavy smell of pine gum.

The pine trees themselves touch

across the forest floor with a

turpentine,

fish bone, spiny-cone, clove-smelling

paint brush hand.

A green paint brush for a hand.

In the winter, the snow is

cut sharply by thirsty ice on

a knife-like bank. The edge of the

river slices against

my bare raw exposed ankles

trembling, moving quickly

in the cold running

pebble-bottomed brook.

Can't forget to wear your

socks in the winter.

Like, I always try to get away

with it anyway. Better

than getting my socks

wet when I break

the ice with my feet like

I usually do. The cold

feels good though.

At least, at first, until I

get home into the warmth

and then my toes start to

sting. Better luck next

time. Next time the crack

from the crashing ice

won't send the deer

running for the next county.

Near the forest in a field

staring wide-eyed, large

eared, white-tailed, the

color of wood and dry grass,

inside the sounds, underneath

the sounds I make with

my wide-track feet are

the deer again, sshhh. A bird

I hadn't heard before

sings under the whisper of a

deer's breath. Sounds a lot

closer than I thought.

I turn slowly and back down

in my mind, you know. Deer

can kick. They aren't really

that small when you are

practically standing right

next to them.

--------

(Bench near the Charles River, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA)

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# Candy faces

THE GRASS

was as soft

as

a

bed.

The

pillow

was

crushed

flowers.

A

white

and

yellow

clover

necklace.

A

white

and

yellow

candy

necklace.

--------

YELLOW

and white

candy

necklaces.

Yellow

and

white

pearls,

little

blossoms

strung

on a string

with

a

needle.

One

clover

flower.

One

clover

flower

with

sweet

candy-filled

petals.

Candy

hearts,

candy faces

and

candy lips.

Sandy beaches,

park benches,

enameled green

wrought iron

legs.

Hot sun-warmed sand.

The tongues of the ocean

forming white maps,

teary inches

where I might have

been before.

I walked

as deeply as I could

up to my chin,

disappearing

underneath the

water.

There were rushing

shells swimming

back to shore,

candy hearts.

--------

(Photograph--n. Maine, my living room window)

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# My large window

MY LARGE WINDOW

overlooks a meadow,

looking out over

a field of sheep

and nine little lambs.

|  |

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# And rainbows

AND RAINBOWS

and rainbows

and rainbows

and diamonds

and rainbows

and pearls

and butterflies

and diamonds

and diamonds

and butterflies

and rainbows

strings of pearls

and gold and silver

the teardrops

of the morning on

the edges of flowers

rose petals

daisies

the golden sun.

(Photograph--Florida Everglades on the Tamiami Trail)

|  |

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# The center of the earth

THE CENTER OF THE EARTH

was a steamy veil

with muffled voices

behind it.

The trees

(with some of

their roots

exposed

hundreds of years

ago) dug deep into

different strata

of clay;

underneath

the water tables

and rock tables--

reaching

to the liquid fire

at the center

of the earth.

|  |

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# The green grass

THE GREEN GRASS

sticking to my leg

leaves

long-stemmed

prints of four fingers.

Sunflower farm, northern Maine

|  |

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# Big yellow sunflowers

BIG

yellow

sunflowers

with lazy brown eyes.

(Southern Canada on the Yellow Hair Highway, near Skeena River.)

|  |

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# The wide blue sky

AFTER THE RAIN

the earth was fresh and green.

The swallows came up to me with

their small beaks and ate the bread

from my hand.

The soft tall stalks of grains in the fields

(barley,

groats,

millet)

waved back and forth together

at the same time, moved by the wind,

like flowing hair made of wheat.

I always lay down here,

my bare toes stuck between

the stalks--

staring up at the wide blue sky.

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# Green shoots

THE DULL BACKSIDES

of knee-high grass sit in

the valley, which is filled with

plain brown earth.

Once in a while, the

stalks of the

grass stems dry out and

edge the fields with a tan

color.

I usually peel the grass back and

chew on the green shoots.

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# We drank tea from wooden cups covered in birch bark

--------

I MADE A PILLOW

from cut grass,

a blanket from the

peeled-smooth branches of

the willow tree, pounding

the naked willow wands

into fabric.

I made

a river from small

stones,

and tiny chairs from twigs.

A line of ants

were my guests.

We drank lake water tea

from wooden cups that I carved

myself and covered with birch

bark.

--------

(n.Maine, my back yard. Summer is an explosion of many different kinds of daisies.)

|  |

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# The crown of a hat

WILDFLOWERS,

a straw hat with

a cloth band.--

I plucked

one yellow daisy and

stuck it in

the band of the hat.

(Photograph - a cat in Brighton, MA. This cat sat on this stoop every day, just about.)

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# The cat

THE CAT THAT DECIDED to chase the

raindrops splattering underneath

the porch

leaped about like she

was scattering the threads

of tangled puddles--scary

mirrors. Toweling

herself dry, the cat

smoothed her velvet fur

with a scratchy

small-tongued comb.

The other cat ran

underneath the house, as well,

and was

quiet, watching

the rain, sitting and

lying in the curly shell

of an old cushion inside

of a woven straw basket

we use to pick strawberries with--

protected by the eaves of the

house. The house was an

over-sized hat with wings,

purple-y wooden knobs

and gingery-gray jigsawed

scalloped shingles

on orange siding.

The basket was woven into

square straw sections

and was a little torn--

so that the top of it looked

like splinters of wood

or grain straws,

or something to press into

the clay on the bank of a river

and decorate with

small pieces of colored glass and

silvered wire.

--------

(N. Florida or Georgia, campground.)

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# It is towards evening

--------

IT IS TOWARDS EVENING

when I finally realize

that the day is like the

evergreen: dark and light

growth in its fullness.

The final cool end of the day

comes high on top of the trees,

as if the heating and cooling

of the earth is threatening the broad

starry sky to not

reappear past the darkening clouds,

as the light through

the woods flickers out like a match.

Never mind,

even though they say that the stars

are not permanent, but have been

burning relentlessly for billions

of years and, just now (and when

we can see their

light in the rising darkness

of the sky far away),

they, of course, burn again

underneath a wash of clouds

over the continuous sound of

the ocean--

all night long

until the morning

and on towards evening again--

when the dark evergreen

in its fullness reaches

for the coolness

in the deeper tides

of indigo.

|  |

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# A grizzly bear day

--------

A GRIZZLY BEAR DAY:

its rainy teeth stuck

in the hollow of a tree.

A squirrel hung upside down

out of the hollow

of a Sycamore tree

back east.

She was eating and staring at me,

still upside down--

looking at me

sitting below

at the bottom of

the

tree.

A grizzly bear day.

I can still see that squirrel's

pretty dark eyes.

As

she ate

her small ears

twitched. She

held a bitter green

acorn.

A grizzly bear day.

An owl sat way up high

in a spruce tree,

way up high

. . . high.

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# The ground is thick with leaves

THE

ground is thick

with papery brown leaf

cut-outs;

thick with

cookie-cutter maple mulch

and

scratchy elm bark.

Spongy

half-trunks of dry

wood trail

hollow

sharp valleys

and

tall

squeaky

grass.

(Fishing boat at dock in Ketchikan, Alaska)

|  |

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# At the beach

AT THE BEACH

the seagulls cried

sounding like the cutting of a thick cloth

with a pair of dull rusty scissors.

The sand was hot

on the palms of my feet;

the saltwater washed

against the shore. I sat

on the sand

with fragments of shells,

dead crustaceans,

sea sponges,

dried starfish, the

jaws of small sharks and

barnacles attached like buttons to

broken, bundled, stranded and tattered

baskets of seaweed.

Terns cried on the dock.

The timber

stuck in the sandy bottom of the ocean

forced boats to grind against their chains,

singing a song with percussion and brass bells--

calling across the sea

like the sound of a tinny

accordion.--

A concertina of noise played loudly against

the long low moan of

a far-away boat.

A piece of driftwood, a soda straw

and a piece of

paper make a sailboat.--

With a paperclip to fasten

the sail, we can send it

rolling up and down like

four-thousand-ton passenger

ships--sailing far above

everything that quietly swims

underneath

the silent ocean surface,

underneath my driftwood boat,

sent with a message.

--------

(Photograph--La Jolla, California)

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# I found a beach in France

I BASK IN THE SUN.

I found a beach in France

(on the Riviera)

and slept alone in a rented room on the

beach there. I looked

in wonder

upon the difference in the ocean water

here and the ocean water overseas,

on the American beaches.

It is sweeter here only sometimes--

like when I found gardenia growing

hidden in an alcove (slightly

to the right)

underneath an arch.

The gardenia were

tucked into a corner

along with baggy canvas gloves,

torn straw hats, rotting leaves and

an old pinking shears rusting away to

orange crusts.

No one would ever

think of finding gardenia there.

Except for my own

searching hands, they

would have been

lost forever--falling

underneath sharp-tongued bushes,

planted with foreboding thorns,

leaving me with welts--

red marks proclaiming an acquisition,

warning me with their wagging

tongues, moving from side

to side like women with

wide hips, scratching

with too thin fingers--flowers

blooming near their legs.

I must have looked at the tiled drain

in the center of the patio too long

and sat on the empty oil can

overcome by wonder

at that calling fragrance.

So much so that I had forgotten

why I sat there at all.

(My neighbor's laundry, n. Maine.)

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# Still asleep (still asleep in bed)

PEACEFUL, JUST LIKE real soft light

right before the full sunrise.

Like a slow touching warmth

on my bared shoulder

underneath the sun--

the heat of the morning

warming the roundness in

the curve of my arm.

You were there,

breathing slowly,

asleep. Your

butterfly eyelashes

fluttered at the

window of your dreams--

your thoughts humming

in some unknown sequence. I saw

you reach out to the warmth

with both arms

in a stretch towards

the new light, your

eyes still closed. But you

smiled

and rolled over

underneath a

mountainous snow-capped sheet.

The sun at your back

seems as if it should have

convinced you

(like a heated argument)

to rise and get busy.

The sun touched you

only once

before you tried

to awaken.

But you,

(you-fly-away-

bird-still-asleep-

in-bed)

closed your eyes

again.

Closed your eyes again, as if the light

had not bidden you,

had not begged

or beckoned

your gentle attention--

even hours ago

when you asked

the beginnings of the

daylight to let you go,

to let you go,

not to tempt your

dreams--

fluttering until

it had hopefully captured

the cocoon of

your sleep, wrapped

tightly around you--

and raised you up

for the tide of the day . . .

like the thousands

of things you

might have wanted to do.

You would not

wake up, no, not

for a song from me,

nor for the stark

light of the afternoon.

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# This same old fence

I SAW A WHEEL TURNING

endlessly on the front lawn,

first to the right and then

to the left. then all the

way around to the north,

south, east and west,

in an indication of

which way

the wind was blowing.

Far away--over some

fields covered with old

barbed wire coiled near

the ground--

I stepped over and

past this same old

fence every day

on my way down to

the cold river with

the stones on the bottom.

|  |

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# Constantly reminding me

I MISS THE OCEAN.

Some sound constantly

reminds me in my sleep

(somehow, I still fall asleep)

of the beach right across the road

from where I used to live.

The houses looked plain.

They were made of

white stucco with

rusty old scythe blades on the

porches to cut away the

high grass--which

hid sneaky cats

and mice

out in the front.

But right now

I was just thinking

that I would like

a long walk

past the high grass

onto that beach

across the road.

The moon will

be full tonight.

Perhaps I could

watch the waves wash

its lazy image up from the water,

to the sand and back again.

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# Dried paint

CHIPS OF DRIED PAINT fell when a stiff frozen

brush slid off from the roof shingles.

There, among the knee-high weeds

was a nest on the ground made of

thread, cloth and twigs.

A starling splashed with

gold ink was there also--

looking like the dark-feathered

night sky as described in someone's letter.

A corner of one of the pages lifted

by the strong wind coming

in from the sill fluttered. She

(the starling) often lands there on the sill to

look for the seed we put out for her.

We lock the cats up

(the big white one especially).

I can smell

breakfast in the kitchen:

homemade bread baking

at nine am--somebody

put some hot tea

on.

|  |

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# The bathhouse

I WENT TO THE BEACH today.

It was rather cold,

since it is close to winter

and summer is beginning

to travel through the shivering

ladies in bathing suits

on its way

out, with no comfort--

making their bare feet

shake on the icy sand,

walking on their way back

into the bathhouse.

The sandy shore feels like there must be

a wood infrastructure

(like a frame or something) underneath it--

constructed like the hull

of a boat.

There must be

underpinnings that are

hollow, holding up our

squeamish legs, the

chill of the changeling weather

hidden in the deep green

of the seas.

The water makes the

sound of a wish,

like the sound of a

weeping willow tree with

full brushing skirts

and long butter-knife leaves.

--------

(Santa Monica beach)

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# Every little grain of sand

EVERY LITTLE GRAIN

of sand on the dunes seemed as if it

had been counted by me in passing--

so many times over--that I can almost see time move

with the water, deeply underneath

the vast floor of the sea,

as if the ocean

was holding the seconds and the minutes

like an hourglass.

More than any other element

or mineral, the sea seems to

embrace the slow-moving body

of the earth (how it moves, why it moves)

more slowly,

more tightly,

than even the stars and planets.

We might be carried along with the stars

like passengers in a donkey cart,

not believing in astrology, all waggling

our heads in one big no--but

getting to our destinations within

some notion of Orion, Leo,

Libra or Taurus.

But it always seems as if time moves--

only then,

only when the

ocean itself

moves.

|  |

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# The flowers in the dark

THE FLOWERS IN THE dark

and watching the shadows

over them.

It was warm that night.

We were going to walk over

to the park and share

a bottle of apple wine just

maybe to be alone the two of us watching

the flowers in the dark and the

shadows over them

at night drinking right

from the bottle.

The air seemed bright

and the park was

almost empty.

Getting drunk

underneath the moon.

Apple cider,

bells and acorn squash,

yellow underneath a yellow moon,

a watery yellow moon.

A yellow sunset,

pumpkins and copper bells

and acorn squash,

watching the drunken moon.

--------

(Bank of the Charles River, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA.)

|  |

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# Shirayama (white mountain)

THE WEATHER IS CLEAR and

the sky clean like a

transparent blue mind that

intends something good for

the day.

Something good for the daily plan,

for the use of sunlight.

For the use of the daylight hours,

for the release of warmth or

the gathering coolness

in the clouding-over

of the evening.

What was intended

for the day is being released slowly

like the rising of the warmth

of the earth

into the cold

upper

air,

--------

RELEASING THE DAY,

traveling

the night realms

into the clear clean

transparent mind

that intends something good

for the daily plan, uncharted

for the next

day,

and releasing that

like the rising coolness of the next day,

and the next.

All of it, everything,

releases itself like

the clear clean transparent

mind that rises forever

into something that leaves no

trace. This is the thing

that washed out the idea that everything was

gained, recorded or abandoned--that nothing except sitting

here, still, in a new daylight hour

makes any sense of any time lost.

All of this

happens without a past tense,

without a memory,

wiping off everything from that

blue-slate sky, washing it clean so that it

is an uncharted vision removing the sense

of any time at all, any time except that which

is constantly released, escaping before my eyes, up

out of my inner being, leaving only the stationary

reassurance that the transparent

clear clean mind of the sky is moving forward,

moving forward

in my mind.

|  |

---|---|---

# The ocean

THE OCEAN CURLED UP

like a cat on a blanket.

The water was warm and salty.

It tasted like seaweed,

pushing my diving body

up to the surface like

a sailing ship.

I swam to the next

shore and ran up on the

dunes,

wondering how to

climb to the top of the

lighthouse and look

out over

the sea.

|  |

---|---|---

# We went sailing

WE WENT SAILING,

chasing after the sunrise

in a small boat.

After a while we reached a shore.

The wind blew us

far away again later.

We went sailing

into the afternoon sun

and landed upon

a pink and white shore.

We rested,

sailed back a ways,

docked the boat

and swam home from there.

|  |

---|---|---

# The shadows on the beach

THE SHADOWS ON THE beach

that summer cast

themselves

over the lap of the sand.

--------

(n. Maine, one wild daisy bush in my back yard)

|  |

---|---|---

# The flowers that were set on the table

THE FLOWERS THAT WERE set on the table

sat next to a glass.

I looked out the window and saw

the day

float by as if

it was not real,

as if you could not tell

the difference between clouds or air or water.

--------

(Creek in my town in n. Maine.)

|  |

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# A river: the story of the Buddha

UNDERNEATH THE GROUND

there was a river flowing,

flowing to where I did not know.

I could feel it rumbling

as I sat there. The earth

moved, almost parted.

It shook the rocks loose

from where they lodged.

It awoke me with the

sound of rushing water.

It forced its way above

ground gushing into the clearing.

It overflowed and

created a lake. I could see

trees in full bloom

at the bottom of the lake. The

birds flew up above

the rising water. The animals:

raccoon, fox, rabbits,

bear and deer all ran safely to

the higher ground around

me. The rabbits and deer

trembled. I trembled

and held them as they came

close to me. Sparrows

and squirrel sat on my

shoulders as we

watched the rushing waters.

You could see the

paths that were worn by others

all the way down to the

lower reaches of the woods underneath

the new water.

These paths and trees were submerged,

but I could see through the

window of the lake

clear to the bottom. The minks

and wolverines hissed

past us chasing field mice.

I laid down again, sure

that we were on high

enough ground. The

squirrels curled up on my

stomach. I watched

them rise and fall with each

breath that I took. A

river was created that ran

above ground crashing

over the rocks in its path.

I was sitting quietly on

top of a hill at the time.

At the end of that summer,

I climbed down from the hill.

I ran to a stream to drink

some water and looked

at myself. I was thin and

my shirt was in shreds.

I could see the bones of

my chest sticking out. I had

felt no hunger, but the coming

of the winter and

the passing of summer

made my lungs want to fill with

the last of the warm air and the

scent of growing things.

Perhaps I had been

asleep, but I know for sure

that I had not moved

from my seat underneath

the tree where I had

sat in repose for so many

months.

What had happened?

I do not know.

Maybe I thought

that the summer

would last all year

'round. That it would be

warm until next year.

I really did feel that

I dreamed that I just

sat there all year.

That I didn't want to move.

That I just wanted to stare at the sky.

Oh, I know there

was some reason,

some reason for all

of this to occur the way

that it did. I don't know

maybe this continuous

flat inexpressible portrayal constructs the

frame of some naked

idea of beauty.

Maybe beauty builds itself in nature

like the two by fours

(four-cornered square windows)

nailed into

the siding of the

cabin that I wanted

to sustain me through the winter,

just a chunk of carefully

troweled cement

right now, really.

My house now is still

a bare tree that has begun to

strip its leaves

since the earlier seasons.

My house is just an idea

and a torn flannel shirt,

my bare shoulders

poking through.

The snowing sky,

the coming of

winter

over the valley

warns me.

Since the

underground river overflowed

onto the valley and

flooded into the upper reaches

of the woods creating

a river, I have found some food and

replenished myself.

I must have swam that lake

one million times through

the succeeding seasons

until my body became sleek

and taut.

I ran and found some discarded

clothing and put it on, and ran

further into and through the woods

until I came to a small town.

I wandered around

the main street

of the town until

I found a bench

and sat down. Everyone

knew of the flooded

valley and asked me

why I had stayed

there so long.

They offered me a job and

I accepted it. I was supposed

to use a two-wheeled truck

and put merchandise

on the shelves

of a department store. I said that

I had no clothes other than the ones

that I had on my back. They said that

that was all right and gave me some new ones.

They also gave me a room.

They said I could come to work right

away. I worked there during the winter, and left

saying that I would be back.

I ran up to the woods

and the lake and sat down

underneath the tree

that I had found before.

I forgot about my job,

my cash stuffed into

my pocket and

sat there for a few days.

Running down to the town,

I worked again until

I could buy some land and

build a house, a

cabin really. It was near

the lake which now

had fish in it.

I grew vegetables in

the back of the cabin:

corn, squash, beans, greens,

tomatoes and potatoes.

I planted apples,

plums and cherries.

I would sit on the

front porch I had built

with the front door

open and lean my chair

back against

the house, sitting around

not doing anything.

The lake was still there.

The squirrels, deer, mink

and fox

were still friendly.

The squirrels would

run into the house

at night and sleep

on my blanket, waking

early in the morning

and begging for food.

They would curl

up next to me and the deer

would approach the house too.

I went down to the lake again.

I watched the flooded valley

in the space between my feet.

I did not move.

The water was crystal clear.

The house/cabin was finished.

It had a wood stove for the colder weather.

I sat there for a very long time.

Suddenly I shivered, my shirt had torn

beyond recognition again. My collar

and a small patch of cloth

still hung over my shoulders.

How long had I sat there this time?

I sighed, oh well.

I stared at the water,

it was so beautiful

that I decided to take

a swim. I took off the remnants

of my shirt

and discarded them.

I jumped in the lake.

The water was icy cold.

My limbs were frozen.

I swam quickly to the other side

of what used to be

the edge of the valley

and crawled out of

the newly created lake

on my hands and knees.

The house I had built was

very close by, somewhere near the

edge of the new lake, but set back in

a clearing near the woods.

I slept by the side

of the lake naked,

letting the sun warm my back,

my unclothed shoulders

relaxed as I smiled

in my sleep.

The seasons passed this way.

When it grew cold, I went inside

my cabin.

The light of

every season scorched me

until my clothes again and again

shredded in the rotting

heat of the sun and my body felt

like the shards of a broken gourd,

a varnished broken gourd.

As I said, I walked back to

my usual tree from my new

cabin, which I had built myself,

with my own hands and sat down.

The lake was abundant for some reason,

even the forest had become

prolific. The wildlife fed from the

thickening of the trees. New thin trees

rooted reaching upward with large

heavy leaves, maybe only two or

three branches on the

saplings. There were more bear, but

they didn't move me from where I sat.

There the woods grew

even thicker and cooler. I

sat until my hair grew long and

tangled, until I thought the

silence was all there was left of me,

until the surface of the water

had no reflection when I gazed into

its inner depths.

I ran, I swam, I could not remember

how long I sat there. My eyes would

wander, but my mind would form no

question. Sometimes I would look around me,

unthinking.

I sat until I forgot

about the new cabin which I had

bought with my job.

How that underground river had

broken through

the surface of the earth

to form a lake flooding the valley

with water, I do not know. Where

the fish and frogs and

turtles had come from, I do not

know. Why I sat

there for so long, I do not

know. I became

old and thin, but I was as

strong as I was

before I had begun to sit there, but I

did not understand why I did.

Why I sat there.

The underground river still flowed full

and relentless, refreshing...

--------

(Someone's feet, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA.)

|  |

---|---|---

# Three wishes

THREE WISHES: ONE

for September, one for

October. And then?

Too cold in December for a wish.

Then again,

If I had a wish I would fly to Los Angeles.

I stayed here instead

sliding on the ice

like an empty toboggan,

watching

slick-shoed businessmen

land bottom-side down.

I stood

there panhandling, suggesting

good restaurants, getting

friendly towards the

night cafe crowd at the

Zen bookstore,

and telling stories

and jokes to strangers. Thinking

late at night, I said

(enigmatically to myself

loving the late hour)

as it started to snow again,

"Once upon a time..."

(Like instead of a nightmare,

perhaps this was the beginning of

a fairy tale).

I sat down abruptly

on the curb to rest

before catching the bus.

the snow turned into a blizzard and

I thought about the

two hundred and

thirty some-odd

pages of stories I had

written that were sitting

in my locker at the shelter.

I wondered when the

laundry would get done,

how I would buy some

food, the whole thing.

I sat on the curb in

the heavy snow for

just that exquisite

moment of not caring,

knowing that I would

accomplish all of this,

eventually.

For the freedom of

just getting covered in snow, I

raised my hands to feel

the snowy air in luxury,

got up and walked home.

|  |

---|---|---

# Once I wondered

--------

ONCE I WONDERED,

a long time ago

about something very important:

I used to attract a wild bird to my hand.

I loved this wild swallow-tailed bird so dearly

that I called to it very often.

I cared for it and admired the

beauty it possessed.

I sat day after day and

wished that it would

come close to me again.

It always looked so soft, so gentle, that

when I was alone, I would dream

of it. When I was asleep, I would

dream of it.

I would wander around

alone looking for it

every day.

At first my hand trembled as I would reach

towards it, and shook when I touched

its soft body.

It would flutter.

My heart would pound

violently in the apprehension

of sudden movement.

The wild bird was so gentle

that the both of us

had to wait until

I was without any nervousness at all,

until I was calm.

I remembered

the pain of my past,

it flew before my eyes until I perspired,

until my palms were

wet with sweat,

until beads of perspiration

and fear made my hands jerk

and my eyes tear.

I used to wish

that she would

be brave enough to

land in my hand despite

my uncertainty.

She began to land

on me in my sleep, and then

in my waking hours.

Gradually, my lack of self-assurance

subsided.

I also began to trust her,

to trust her deeply.

She also obviously trusted me.

She would fly

up to a branch and

sing over my head

so sweetly that I could

not possibly recognize the melody.

I could not find the repetition

or remember the intricacies

of the songs.

When I spoke to someone, she would

fly to my shoulder

and put her soft feathers

underneath my chin.

The winter was mild.

She remained outside

in the largest pine

and flew into my kitchen until the summer, when

she lead me down into the fields

filled with wheat berries

and rye grains.

She would swoop and dive

among the waving swells of

bending, yielding stalks

shaking the plump grains to the ground.

Ahhh!

The beauty she possessed.

(Photo: buttercups in someone's garden, Brighton, MA.)

|  |

---|---|---

# Right around the corner

RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER from where

you lived I saw a house with a lot of flowers in front.

I stopped and picked out one blossom

near the side of a pot,

although I shouldn't have

and broke it off right down

towards the bottom of the stem.

Putting it up to my nose,

I smelled its fragrance as I walked away.

--------

(House of Blues, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA)

|  |

---|---|---

# Friends

--------

I. The Letter

I always wanted to write you a letter.

At least, one that might be answered in

the affirmative ... with some information:

the usual, etc.--maybe with some pressed

flowers in between the pages.

Pages containing stories

of lives, paragraphs filled with enticing

imagery, sentences defining centuries or eons ... just to

see the timeline, the time pass and a more far-

reaching perspective on

what my vision of meaning

or essentiality might be in terms of waiting for

an answer. Yeah, whatever might exist

beyond my memories of that small town

ebb.

I always wanted to say certain things

in a letter like this. Of course, with

the rapid pace of my life I never do. But,

seeing you was fun.

And, of course, I could not go beyond

what I have always been used to--

to tell you that what I wanted from

your writing me was something I missed from,

maybe, years ago.

I was delighted to be back in town

again, but it seems I see too much in

small insignificant descriptions of

that one little place where I hide myself.

And sometimes, I seem

to write endlessly as if it was

a form of travel, as if

my hum-drum life could

hold a rationale that certainly could

explain the same old street, the same

old store fronts ...

and the way you go to work

every morning.

You must still see me sitting there, laughing

to myself, as I drink my

chamomile tea, sneaking a

glance like a cat half asleep--

curled into itself,

used to that one warm contented spot on

the broken cane chair in your apartment.

I sat at the place where you

work in the mornings,

waiting--really, just daydreaming,

humming to myself--

indolent or having only half the

rationale

you did ... being employed there.

I wasn't buying anything

much. You waited on tables

and at the counter ...

used to my presence by the window.

A placemat, the crockery on my table, silverware,

woven like the painting that you said

you liked ... me married to a scenery three

thousand miles away on a flat-topped

mountain

near the Grand Canyon.

I thought I heard you whistle

and turned around the

other day. You were not there--

leaving me to stare blankly at my tea,

the road waving in a liquid blue line

on the inside of the cup.

Tomorrow you promised to

come back, filling your

work hours behind the

counter--where you laughed

with your other friends,

planning dinners and

holidays off at home:

sleeping, reading your books

and you still see things

as if they are not the

dull flow of whatever you must have

planned for the week.

Nice to hear from you.

Write when you can.

I might drop by again when I'm in town

and see if you're still there.

here is my address ...

call

if you can.

--------

II. Coming Home

The last letter was sent from

Quebec, before that Fairbanks,

I wandered even further, coming

back home later--

in my passion to see

what had happened

since I had left.

The next day was Thursday,

and I arrived on the train at

three pm.

In town for a while,

I walked over to the restaurant

saying, "Hi!" with a smile.

Remembering something that I had

left at your house

six months ago, I sent

a friend to go and pick it up.

Then changed my

mind, running down

the street after him.

"Never mind, I'll get it tomorrow ...

or whenever Sandy works again," I said.

"I was thinking of moving back here

for a while ...

I missed it."

The radio blasted Sheri Baby as

I went over the

last letter.

"sweet dreams"

I wrote in the margin.

--------

(Photograph--motorcycle on Melrose Ave., Hollywood, CA.)

|  |

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# Waiting for the afternoon

--------

IT WAS

raining. It looked

like teardrops were

running down the windowpane

from the second floor,

like someone must have

peered out--pushing

their head past the

sash and the windowsill

in the middle of

the day leaning over

the ledge--watching

the sand-colored

sidewalk with intensity ...

Maybe they are forlorn,

perhaps listening for

someone to walk up

to their door. It sure is

raining again there is

really no lonesome person

upstairs, drenched with

noontime, summertime

wishes. It is just my friend

Ellen who lives up there

and she

is already walking down the

stairs

ready to go shopping

with an empty laminated

bag on two

string handles

folded underneath her arm.

A kid slams the front

door to the building.

The rain stops.

My radio droned on--

slipping and drying

on the hoarse

cry of a song about

wandering roads like the

dusty flight of the

cycle-club routes

through Arizona,

high-riding through

to the dried paint

curling up on the siding

of my apartment building.

I spilled my tea this

morning my elbow

slipped, and now

the brown-edged stains hold

rain in them.

I had been chatting

and hanging on my

wide screen-less

ledge ... half-sitting

on my chair, resting on one

leg folded up underneath

my other leg, talking

to a friend standing down

on the sidewalk

for a few seconds.

I ran for the toast as

she left and accidentally

flung my cup

splattering the tea down

the side of the house.

Ellen from upstairs must

have come back. She

slammed the door

too loud again. The

rain has stopped for

about twenty minutes now and

the sand-colored cement

has dry edges receding

like parchment. The water marks on

the windowpane got dusty

as the sidewalk

turned sun-colored

and mirage-like,

reflecting the heat

like a mirror.

--------

(Photograph - Santa Monica beach, California.)

|  |

---|---|---

# Dreamland

THAT SAME DAY I THOUGHT

I caught you hanging up on

the telephone, I bought you

some flowers to tell you that I knew

that that was you on the phone.

I didn't want to be too subtle, or

too bold, but

the flowers should

have been larger better

prettier for you.

There wasn't any letter in my box.

Today beyond dreaming I reached in

and felt around the

metal sides. The box

was empty except for a

few letters informing me of

forthcoming sales. God

I hope I'm not being a

fool you know that probably

wasn't even you on the phone.

My existence here in this

town was also not too subtle

or too bold.

I thought about my present

life as if it was a small town

ride down Sunset Boulevard,

the Strip, or Melrose

Avenue: a frying

hotplate along the sidewalk

during the day in

one hundred degree

temperatures, try starting

at one hundred

and counting upwards.

The sign for this

township used to look

like it had two teeth missing

and nothing to

replace them with:

Hol ywo d.

Now they've fixed

it. At least now it looks

like somebody in this town had

some money. You'd think

they didn't have the cash to

get the damn sign fixed.

Smackdab in the middle of

dreamland: Hollywood,

California, movie capital of

the USA.--Motown,

Capital records, everything -

I heard a knock

on my door. I ran in my slip

scratching at my

knees. I threw a robe

over my shoulders

reaching in the sleeves.

No one was there shit.

That same day, that

very same day I caught

you (or whoever it was)

hanging up on the telephone

and I bought you

some flowers, embarrassing

myself enough to tell you

that I really could have

used that call, I knew also

that waiting for a friend

to get in touch with me made

me feel more positive than negative.

Why would anyone call

anyone, even by accident, and not

say anything?

Well, it didn't matter

if that was you or not. Guess

anyone could have used

those flowers. I wouldn't

have minded keeping them

for myself come to think of it.

I knew that I would eventually search

my mailbox again and again,

my telephone messages.

Nope, another day, nothing.

Sunset Boulevard--Motown, Capital records,

Paramount pictures

--everything.

And here I am waiting

around, all alone,

not too worried,

dressed only in my

slip in this infernal heat

smackdab in the middle of dreamland ...

Drives me nuts when people

call on the phone and

hang up without

saying anything. That was

probably UPS at my door

too. Lucky me. Happens

one more time and I think

I'll treat myself to a movie.

Think I deserve it after I

spent all that money on those

flowers and went and embarrassed

myself all over the place.

Because now I don't even think

it was who I thought it was

on the phone.

|  |

---|---|---

# Two rooms

TWO ROOMS,

quiet,

lit

candles.

A supper.

Life alone usually.

Staring out the

curtained window.

Going for a walk,

a long walk.

Not knowing where I

was going, just taking

a different way through

the woods and brushing

unfamiliar trees.

(from an ad in The Boston Herald:

20 acres. cabin. $30,000.

Access to brook.

Forested land.

Immed. sale/occupancy.)

(Alternative:

5 acres. $60 down. $60 mo.

$5,995 total price. Riverside County,

Los Angeles, California.

Must sell.)

|  |

---|---|---

# Visible underground

--------

VISIBLE UNDERGROUND was a

passageway that I often

took when I needed the

unknown source of

the air there. Bats whistled

through the endless

caverns, hanging upside

down in cocoons above

the dripping floor to ceiling stalactites

making quartz from water

and silica for a billion years in the past

and into the future. Albino

spiders crawled on the

calcified walls. Blind

albino fish swam in the

glass-like pools and lakes

in that country

underneath the world above.

There was a small

hole in the ground that

opened into the cavern.

I stayed in there and

tried to guess where the

air came from. No one knew.

|  |

---|---|---

# Springtime

(PROVINCETOWN)

The hill was fresh and

green in the springtime.

Covered with snow in the

wintertime, and falling

leaves in the autumn.

It made us think of

what might be beyond

the sudden sliding wedges of sand.

We walked further and found out

that beyond that were

more sand dunes

sliced by hollow reeds.

--------

(Vintage car in San Diego, California.)

|  |

---|---|---

# A long cold night

A QUIET RIDE IN MY old used Ford across the

country: Louisiana bayous on the raised

highway. Texas, Arizona near the border--

pavement waving in the heat of the desert sun.

Losing a tire to the safety ruts on Interstate 10.

Sleeping in the cold at night in the back of the car.

(My forest in Oakfield, Maine, winter.)

|  |

---|---|---

# It was a dry winter

IT WAS A DRY WINTER.

It was not very cold either.

There had not been much rain that summer.

Even when

the night settled into a lazy dawn

sparkling in the sky with pink clouds

the weather remained warm enough

to run outside without a coat.

I looked at the pear tree we had planted

last summer. It still had the tag on it

from the store,

and was still too small.

Outside we could see the fog on our breath

in the very early morning.

I could see beyond this present time

to a time that might be a little easier

more ...

how would you say?

able to manage the elements--an early California

winter morning could make up for a lot of things.

--------

(The vineyard in someone's front yard in Brighton, MA.)

|  |

---|---|---

# Sweet corn

I SAT THERE WATCHING the

sunlight flicker in and out

of the window. The man

across the street grows a large

vineyard with blue grapes.

It takes up his whole entire front yard.

He has these huge (like really

gigantic) tomatoes the size of small cantaloupes

and a six-foot sign that says:

NO TRESPASSING!

The cat from our house

sneaks into his garden.

This cat

destroyed all of our sweet corn

much to the consternation of a

lady in the house.

|  |

---|---|---

# Laz-E-Girl

I SLEPT ALMOST ALL day until

four in the afternoon in the Laz-E-Boy

chair in the so-called "music room"

in a friend's apartment feeling the

soft fabric with the underside of my toes.

I went grocery shopping and put the

produce in a used Rodier Paris bag.

Nice, huh?

I made corn bread with

fresh strawberry juice mashed

with a fork.

Tomorrow I will make corn

bread with overripe bananas.

|  |

---|---|---

# We have two plants in the house

WE HAVE TWO PLANTS in the house.

One of them is a jade plant

and the other one is some kind of

ivy. The ivy plant looked

sort of wilted. That is, in need of some water.

I watered it and it perked up

considerably.

I put it in a prominent place in the

living room near a decorative tray

on an oblong table

underneath a print (a painting) of

two people dancing with each other

it looked much better there.

--------

(Guitar on East Wind Commune, Missouri in front of kitchen building.)

|  |

---|---|---

# There's someone downstairs playing a guitar

--------

THERE'S SOMEONE DOWNSTAIRS playing

a guitar and singing.

Over my head I can feel the rustle of a

very tall tree. The sky looks like it should be

in Holland, the colors are that rare,

like Van Gogh has shoved a flat brush against

the pigments meant for a stovepipe or

the worn shape of some plaster

wall in his abode.

The singing has stopped.

|  |

---|---|---

# India tea

--------

IT RAINED WHEN I WAS asleep.

I didn't notice.

We scratched the newly sanded and varnished

floors and I searched for more wood finishing

materials to cover it up.

We made some India tea

and I hummed to myself,

When Sunny Gets Blue

just wondering about the

ferocious rain coming in all the windows

splattering on the floor.

Shut some of the windows and

mopped up the floor. I looked

at the puddles and the

gullies forming off the gutters.

The tea was a little too hot

to drink

so I let it cool.

|  |

---|---|---

# I heard a blue jay call

--------

I HEARD A BLUE JAY call

from a tree, as if the houses did

not come between us, as if she

was calling across some corn

fields--looking for her

nest.

I hope she found it.

I sure hope she found it.

|  |

---|---|---

# Wishes on the Edge of Time: Poetry Journal #2

|  |

---|---|---

# PART ONE: Summer

|  |

---|---|---

# In the summer

TODAY EVERYTHING WAS so full of light,

like the partial sunlight showing

through the rippling chintz

curtains.

It is exactly like what I thought

things should be like. Perhaps

my feelings followed the flow of the rising

sun inadvertently like one long breath in

and out. I didn't even move

from in front of the window

for most of the

day. I sat, just thoughtless, my eyes occasionally

following the movement of

the light like a

cat.

|  |

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# Lightning

WHAT IS RUNNING IN and out of your dreams

like lightning across the

morning sky?

--------

(Mojave Desert, California)

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# The junction tree

MAYBE AT SOME JUNCTION

a tree will stop us

near the end of the journey,

just for the evening.

The deepening nighttime

seems to be waiting for something. Ah,

ah yes!

The moon appears

sideways just like one bright crescent

earring dangling in the sky.

--------

(Yellowhorse, Arizona, 1992)

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# The painted desert

HUGE CLOUDS FLOATED overhead

like ladies in long skirts, as if they

were balloons tethered to a rope.

The bald desert mountains

look like inverted triangles,

then triangles turned the right way,

intersecting each other like a traditional Navajo

pattern woven into a cloth.

The cactus stand silenced

with their arms raised to their ears like

they must now be listening, waiting for an answer

to something...

An answer to come whooping across the sand

like a tumbleweed rolling into the thorns

of their fat succulent juicy flesh.

Pink cactus flesh

with a red and yellow cactus flower

decorated my clay dinner plate next to the

rice.

A tumbleweed sat near the dust on my feet

as if it was affirming the answer it must

have given, the cactus bringing back to me

the gossip from the conversations I had

heard whispered in the desert air here

before.

The tumbleweeds gossiped about the cactus.

The dullard cactus still stood there, their

arms raised listening for a reply to some

question even as the dusk fell deep into the

night ...

the orange and blue night.

I rolled up into my sleeping bag, in

the cold, snuffling to myself and staring up

at the roof of the sky over me, stars peeping

back as timid as galloping jack rabbits

hightailing it away, afraid of my cloaked

feet moving under the bag liner.

Later, I stuck my overly-warm feet into

the cold air to cool them off,

unzipping the edge of

the quilted bag.

The stars grew bolder when they

saw that I was falling asleep, as if they had been

speaking to me from far away...

silent hounds who moved their mouths,

but emitted no noise due to the distance,

gradually getting larger and closer

to me like the curious gentle coyote.

The moon blew open the heavy darkness

and skittered across the sand

like a frightened beige spider with

long pale legs.

I snored loudly trying to make myself heard

across the distance.

A coyote, yipping, ending in a snorkel, dove

into the Arizona night.

Half-aware, I slept on through the moon-

flecked darkness, my cheeks puffed up with

the effort of snoring so loudly.

The frozen air reddened my face

which was turned towards the morning,

which would be there soon.

--------

(CAFÉ, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS)

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# Just enough

A TIME SPENT WAITING,

writing

letters.

|  |

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# This summer

THIS SUMMER WAS LIKE there was

all kinds of singing and just not even

seeing anything

but running all

the way home

and thinking of you and that it all looked

like - oh, I don't know -

like last summer, like this

summer was like last summer,

which is an incredibly good thing.

It was very warm

last summer. It was the warmest summer that

I can ever remember in

Boston. The sun was very close.

I could tell because every time I looked up

it was right there. Like it was

beaming down three feet over

my head.

Like an impressionist painting,

there were yellow

flowers and property owners watering

their lawns before work in starched white shirts

and the nice neat

gardens and the smell of new wet

flowers - I don't know what kind

of flowers they were -

but I didn't need to know.

The first part of the summer

was hot. I had

forgotten it was like this (like

I do every year)

but it is - all summer long.

(I woke up last night thinking I had missed the sunrise

and it was all dark again like I had slept all

day, but it was the middle of the night with

plenty of time left until daylight. There I was,

my sleep a blur of bright sidewalks and stationary

sprinklers: the water turned up too high, soaking

my shoes and cooling my skin.)

It was all a dream,

summer dreams.

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# In the middle of summer

IN THE MIDDLE OF SUMMER,

deep in the middle of May,

I thought of something.

I imagined myself asleep

in a wild bed of California poppies

which smelled like

opium and honey.

The acrid taste of flower petals

was on my tongue.

Yellowish pollen rubbed

off on my hands and

clothing.

|  |

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# A poet's day

DREAMING,

the rain

falls into my hands.

|  |

---|---|---

# The sound

THE SOUND

in the wind.

The sun rises.

|  |

---|---|---

# Letter from a beachcomber

(LOS ANGELES, 1992)

When it rains,

fresh water pours into the ocean

from the streets along the

waterfront and the ocean

swells with having to absorb

the run-off. The water

in the gutters runs clear and clean though -

not like in other cities.

You can even wash in it, put your

bare feet in there. It feels great

to walk barefoot in the rain here.

There are lemons and bitter unripe and ripe

blood and regular oranges that float on top

of the swirling rainwater. So many people

raise orange and lemon trees there in Los

Angeles. The lost fruit bumps

against my ankles on its way

out to sea.

--------

(Santa Monica beach near Pacific Coast Highway)

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# Santa Monica beach

(DECEMBER 1993)

I walk to the edge

of the incoming tide.

Four large

red and brown

pelicans fly by

and search for fish.

My hands are cold

in the salt air.

Still dark out, it

is cold in the very early morning

on the sand.

But,

the sun will be sizzling

hot later when it comes up.

The sand is printed

like the wallpaper in my room,

with crests of delicate

bird foot lace.

|  |

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# Flowers

FLOWERS

falling in the wind

away from

the gardens

that raised them into the hands

of the earth

and sidewalk vases made of

clean cement curbs.

|  |

---|---|---

# reflection

WATCHING MY REFLECTION

in the window as the rain beats

against the gentle traces of water

already accumulated.

|  |

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# Jones, Georgia

(DECEMBER, 1993)

At that time of day

the sun came up

so that I could see its

position in the sky.

As it crossed the horizon

a tree stuck its branches

against the swift clouds

tearing them into daylight,

rending the cloak of the darkness,

tearing at the sky like bear's claws.

The position of the sun was

revealed to me as this kind of feeling.

For most folks, it was only a

time of day.

But I saw that bright dot of light

that appeared in the sky as not moving in my mind,

not moving with the morning or the

searching for food of the birds.

The woodpeckers tapped for grubs and

insects. You said that you did not hear them.

Falling acorns had pelted near where you

sat but you said that you were not aware

of that either.

Squirrels live near oak trees because

they eat acorns.

At that time of day only

the bright dot of light

that stood in the sky

did not seem to move with

the morning.

The morning opened

like a yawn.

The yellow of the sun dripping moisture on

the brown earth

slowly,

washed away by blue.

(Santa Monica beach, California)

|  |

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# Southern California

LIKE A BAUBLE, A RHINESTONE necklace,

like the nature of a clear, pastel blue jewel,

the air was sapphire.

It held a star and a

diamond crescent - the remainder

of a day-lit moon. The star

seemed to be trying to

reach the night planet but

was starting to fade - failing into

the scorching light and

dissolving like a dust mote

in the sizzling vapors

of the stewing morning

sea and the kitchen

of a tropical sun.

At noon the sea was

a milky opal lunch -

the waters of the pacific

feasted on the wind.

Brown pelicans flew single file

mirroring schools of dolphin

in the new world

of the afternoon.

Deeper blue at night,

the dreamy azure tides

drown three-quarters of

the planet.

The world's largest

most expensive jewel is only a usual

morning near the Mexican border.

The sky is an

optical illusion on the belt

of the curved horizon,

like that glassy see-through

blue water-like stuff

you see

on the hand of a rich woman.

It was another day

underneath the sapphire

that starts to light up

a southern California kitchen

before the sun crawls over the muddy

cliffs of Malibu.

|  |

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# The rain

THE RAIN OPENED WIDE

rushing through us like the

wind.

|  |

---|---|---

# On the way to San Diego

(1997)

The Chocolate mountains never seem to melt

in the hot sun of the Sonoran Desert.

If they did, there would be chocolate-covered

rattlers, chocolate-covered rocks and

scorpions and gooey, chocolate-covered

sand.

The mountains were so pretty

that I needed to cross them

more slowly than a

motor-driven vehicle could,

to see the sage,

bitter and tasty

for a sore throat.

Perhaps one day I'll really live

in Ocotillo and live with the sage

growing around me

so bitter and tasty

for a sore throat.

But right now, though,

maybe I'll just

whisper my greetings

to the spirits of Cochise and Geronimo

deep in the hidden places of the

peaceful rocks of the Chiricahua's.

Right now, in these mountains in Arizona, like

maybe millions and billions of years ago,

all life balances upon a three-foot diameter

perilously close to eternity--but

never falling--

never failing,

never leaving,

never changing.

Huge perfectly sculpted oval boulders balanced forever.

And every day in California

there is a bright purple carpet

of flowers somewhere--

sometimes the flowers

light up like flames

--flaming orange and red

like a Comanche bonfire.

|  |

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# Rain

(KETCHIKAN, ALASKA, night)

Rained today,

twice as hard in the

early morning and a

little in the afternoon, lightly,

as the smooth quiet day

continued gliding into

a velvet star-lifted evening

spiriting across the Borealis.

|  |

---|---|---

# PART TWO: Winter

(Meduxnekeag River, Houlton, Maine)

|  |

---|---|---

# it will be towards morning

IF IT SNOWS, IT WILL be towards

morning. She lives

a full life

and feels that poetry is like gold

and the sunrise like mango nectar,

sweet and mellow.

|  |

---|---|---

# Winter this year

I WAITED FOR WINTER this year.

I sat amid the falling leaves as autumn

began to turn the trees gray and the blue

of the seasonless air began to question

this change. "At least it will be cooler,"

I thought.

I waited through part of an overly hot summer

at the window of a friend's apartment.

She was gone for two weeks at one point and

had handed me

the house key, "here," she said, and left.

That's why I might say that those were "my"

plants and that was "my" room.

Although neither was completely true.

Fall came,

and the questions that the harsher winds flung

at my lack of defenses now formulated

themselves by banging into the

leaveless branches, their sap turned off like

a clock.

The trees became wordless and dormant.

They sometimes have no motions to the left or to

the right except to rattle as if no one

could force them

into conversation.

The marigolds that I had picked

have lost their sticky pungent yellowed

pollen and their

moistness has dried

completely on the windowsill leaving

pyramids of dust, scrap paper and many more

dried flower petals swept under the bed and

desk snapping merrily underneath my heels

when I shove my foot on top of them.

The winter came in with a roar like an

unrelenting wild beast set loose ripping

apart my unbuttoned coat and tearing my

scarf from around my neck, flinging it

hopscotching like a pogo stick across the street,

twirling it into the air like a banner.

The cold made me cry like a defeated

warrior.

No sense in fighting the weather.

Only an echo of my memories survived the silence

that comes when the temperature dives below zero.

In the summer, my room was filled with the

smell of foliage now frozen to the root.

I remember how much softer these branches were

when they were full. But I had waited and

this, of course, was no indication that I had

waited too long ... that

the leaves had fallen off into huge piles on

the lawn simply because I had waited too long,

like the hair falling off an old

gentleman's head. It was just a natural thing.

And had nothing to do with me.

I was just crashing at this

person's house and I had nothing to do, so waiting

was like a full-time occupation for me. I didn't have a job, so

I was hiding from my friend's predatory roommates. She doesn't

mind that I am not working, they might.

No.

When I was a child I had sat still and waited

also.

Sometimes all day, just sitting there.

Sitting there (perhaps I will do that again

soon) as long and as quietly

as a five-hundred-year-old tree.

Perhaps, now, no one wonders how old that tree

really is.

Perhaps they do not care.

No. I did not wait for this winter.

It just happened.

I saw frozen water in the street

today. Broken like shards of glass.

Call the repair person.

Come and fix it.

Ask them to put a brand new shiny piece of smooth

pale ice, with glue and putty, right back

where the broken pane used to be.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow I will call the repair person

and have them fix the broken ice

or pour water on it like an architect -

like god.

Like GOD.

IT IS WINTER.

Like the five-hundred-year-old tree (that I know

about that nobody else seems to know about because

I would not tell them and anyway they never

listen to me) I grew silent. Like when I was

a child.

I did not trust anyone with that tree,

so, I did not indicate the existence of this

five-hundred-year-old tree

to anyone.

Like winter, it is

just natural.

The dry cold makes the signs in the freezing

windows of stores flip around in my eyes.

Like suppose it was warmer: the bus would

stop where it should and not

thunder by leaving me to shiver - alone,

abandoned,

disgusted.

Unless it was raining, of course. In

the middle of any storm the bus takes on

the attitude of a bull in a bull ring and me,

the defeated matador, unwilling to kill

anything, but wet and dirty as bus after

bus is filled to capacity and the curb

acts like the thumb in a hose spraying

as much mud at me as possible.

I suppose the marigolds will

grow next year. Yup, guess so. Hard to believe.

|  |

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# One deep promise

SITTING ON THE EDGE of my blanket,

the softness of

my bed protecting me,

deep in my breast.

The scent of this silent winter

was fulfilling one deep promise:

looking to see the snowy lights,

watching the snow fall

and the cars passing by.

|  |

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# Without doubt

EMPTY PLATES WASHED and set

in place.

Daybreak,

winter

without doubt.

|  |

---|---|---

# It was too cold to remember

THE ICE FELL TO THE bottom of a squall,

frozen in strata as the wind drifted

the snow like huge ornaments

up on a pine above me.

Each tree was decorated

with deadly-looking but beautiful

heavy wedges of snow.

Every once in a while, the ice with its

snowy frosting would blow up as the impacted

mantles would fall, sliding a cope of

wet snow into my upturned face.

It was almost warm

in my winter boots,

but I was too numb too tell.

My gloves filled with the sharp-edged crystals

that were slapping around in the gale,

spraying and sticking on my legs

like flocking. It was too cold.

The lode was packed securely around

my sunken feet.

I went home with frostbite

that year in New England.

|  |

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# Leaves

THE LEAVES

buried in the winter

--------

WAIT,

frozen

underneath my feet.

|  |

---|---|---

# Four miles to the grocery store

OUR EYES REFLECTING the lights of passing cars,

holding hands to keep from sliding under a

snow drift or falling on the thick ice, bent

against the blizzard, we struggled

to the grocery store. It seems

further than we estimated

the day before it

snowed.

Now it seems like

at least four miles

each way.

|  |

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# coming home

FOR MY DAD

Coming home -

the scent of a pine,

lights in the windows.

It never even occurred to me

what it would be like to see you again,

it has been so long. I saw

you before

in a dream:

the snow on the ground.

I gaze towards the door and see

you in my mind as I

walk up from

the street.

|  |

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# The place

THE PLACE WHERE WE once

watched the snow falling.

--------

(Harvard Yard, Cambridge, MA)

--------

YOUR COAT

Surreptitiously embracing in the cold.

My hair and clothing disheveled

by the strength of the gusts moving the chattering leaves,

rattling winds tearing at me hidden deep inside

piles and piles of sweaters keeping

my hands warm inside your slender waistband,

holding you underneath the tent

of your coat.

|  |

---|---|---

# Signs

SIGNS SWINGING ALONE in the blasted wind,

wildly

alone and helpless.

|  |

---|---|---

# Books

BOOKS,

a bottle of cider,

warming some of it on the

stove.

|  |

---|---|---

# May

THE RAIN IS LIKE

dull voices gossiping

until we fall asleep.

A warm breeze with

the winter hidden in

the smell of melting ice.

There is only a little respite now

at the beginning

of April.

So, we must wait

until at least May.

--------

(Freshly baked bread, East Wind Commune, Tecumseh, Missouri)

|  |

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# Purple lilacs

LILACS

spring

already

this

early

each

flower

falls

off

the

stem

like

the

snapdragons

and

lilies

of

the

valley

one

and

then

another

one

and

then

another

one

like

little

bells

scattered

all

over

the

place

so

that

it

feels

like

you

should

grab

some

so

that

they

never

get

crushed

underfoot

and

throw

them

in

the

air

and

feel

them

falling

back

upon

your

face

one

by

one

and

bouncing

off

your

nose

like

rain

scattering

on

the

ground

among

the

wild

flowers

and

rose

hips

and

huge

bunches

of

fallen

purple

lilacs

too.

|  |

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# The train

THE SNOW TURNS TO RAIN

and the rain to a humid steam...fog.

A rainy day.

I am leaving,

so

that no one knows why,

or when,

or where to.

|  |

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# PART THREE: My Travel Journal 1993-2015

(Cross border bus from San Ysidro to Tijuana, Mexico.)

|  |

---|---|---

# The Beginning & The End

I USUALLY STARTED MY cross-country trips in Boston. It actually cost me about $35 to drive my Toyota compact station wagon from Boston to Daytona Beach in 1993. This also included a quart of motor oil. I enjoyed taking photographs, sometimes with a borrowed camera, sometimes with a used and damaged Leica and a beloved used and formerly discarded 70mm Soligor zoom lens, sometimes with disposable cameras.

California was my final destination. I tried driving my own vehicle cross country three times, but only made it all the way to California once. Before I started trying to drive cross country, I bought Greyhound tickets and took the bus to California usually in the beginning of October, staying in West Hollywood for the winter, managing to take the city bus to Santa Monica beach often.

I usually planned on driving through the warm weather of the south, so I took I-95 down to Florida, then drove cross country from there.

I prayed my way through the raised highway in Louisiana during a hurricane. Or, more accurately, right in front of one. Hurricane George, I think it was. I do not remember the name of the thing. I also prayed my way through a very heavy rain storm in the middle of the Everglades with a big hole under my foot which made it a lot like surfing trying to hold down the rubber floor mat while driving and thinking of what would happen if I slipped into the water of the swamp, which was on either side of the narrow two-lane road. Alligators and snakes, you know.

|  |

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# On the way from Boston:

SOUTH CAROLINA, DAYTONA, San Sebastian & Miami

November-December. By the time I got to South Carolina from Boston, I began to notice that the deepening foliage had become silent. The rooted forest and plants, in other words, were not the only presence that I felt. I became aware of many smaller animals and large populations of possum.

There were mountains of possum with greedy affectionate hugging naked human-like fingers and hands. This was true in Amherst, Massachusetts near Emily Dickinson's house. (Although, I didn't find this out until after the millennium). And there were also possum in Kent's Store, Virginia and Moundsville, West Virginia. The possum seemed like they might need to cling to someone for a little kiss like a baby. They have wicked, sharp-looking teeth, but soft personalities, and seem a little friendly, not tending to be too scared. They just act paralyzed and fall over to play dead when they are frightened (i.e. playing possum). Rummaging and toddling, they rolled past me every so often. I met a beautiful beige and brown, almost golden, possum near Wheeling, West Virginia (Moundsville to be exact) face to face. We became friendly with each other. I invited it into the house, but I was wary of the other humans that lived there so I decided to just talk to it at the door.

After South Carolina, I drove through Georgia, the state I was named after, due to having a family from the south. I usually hide my middle name unless I really like someone and feel like having a good chummy laugh. It took me forty some years to get used to carrying that name. But after traveling so much (many times from one end of Georgia to the other), the beauty of the state began to make me feel a whole lot better about my name. I would just sort of submerge it when I was little, and sort of drown in embarrassment.

From Georgia, I drove into the beautiful tropical city of Jacksonville. And, from there, to central Florida, still on Route 95 all the way from New York City. That was I-95 from New York City and the curving carnival ride of the Holland Tunnel right to the Everglades outside of Miami.

Newts were the main urban non-aggressive tiny reptile inhabitants of Daytona, as numerous as some ants. There were little, black lizards all over the sidewalks (newts). Without fail, every day at noon, they scampered into the hot sunlight. Just before sundown, they would disappear. In the shadier hours they slept, I believe, hidden in front lawn shrubbery. I had to cross a bridge over a seemingly very clean orange-toned Halifax river at about six in the morning every day. The fish would jump out of the rust-colored water into the sky. Besides jumping fish, the shoreline of the Halifax river in Daytona Beach had frequent visits from Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias). Exquisite birds, very elegant and impressive fliers.

Later, resuming my journey west, I turned into a Denny's parking lot, looking for a place to sleep that night and also to purchase an unusual yearly cup of coffee. I felt sure that there was something mysterious dangling over my poor head. I made a quiet observation at an interested distance that amounted to the creation of a statement of profound respect for the rights of the animal kingdom - especially if they are poisonous. Like, "Please don't bite me."

"How mysterious is this something?" I asked myself trepidatiously. "Perhaps there is a lizard or snake in that tree. Just because I am parked behind Denny's does not mean that the Florida wilderness cannot creep in here."

"Perhaps that feeling is a bird. Or - worse - a lizard eating that bird. It might be getting ready to bite me too. Oh, my god, I don't know. I could really feel that lizard's beady eyes bearing down on me. Oh yeah, how about a poisonous snake?"

These snakes have names of course. I don't mean you should call them Harry or Tom, etc. I mean that they have species names. They might be dangerous, but they are sort of beautiful. Have not seen any yet. Good.

Copperheads, water moccasins, and cotton mouths inhabit most of the southern United States. And this is a part of the south. I like snakes. I like to watch them and grew up with a huge number of vividly striped green and chartreuse garden snakes in Illinois, but I am wary. Even if you get bitten, there are simple techniques so that you can survive the poison until you get an antidote at a local hospital.

I had driven to San Sebastian (home of some of the Seminole and formerly of Billy Bowlegs who was a compatriot of Tecumseh) before I entered the Glades. There I saw the largest land crab that I have ever seen - about a foot square. They are crabs but they live in the forest, not the ocean. It was lurching drunkenly sideways scaring me blightless. My feet took a curling light step together and then I catapulted myself into the air. My feet were bare inside of my plastic flip-flops and I marveled at my own terrorized bravery. The crab ran for shelter underneath a parked car near the edge of the woods. These crabs do not find their habitat in the ocean or lakes, they live under mulch and leaves in the woods. They are quick and you wouldn't want to fling a bared toe in front of them, but they are white-ish and crawl on top of things when moving, so they are relatively easy to spot. And they tend to be large. Very.

In Miami Beach, the residents let their very numerous coconuts rot on the street in general, not even bothering to blend the meat and freeze it as a puree--or to make the heavy oil into soap. Both of which they could afford to do. All it takes is a hammer and a good even thwack on the cement sidewalk, first piercing the two holes in the top with a large nail and draining the wonderful coconut milk. One gets the impression that care should be taken if one wants to get even one little taste if the tree belongs to someone else.

I started to get rather sunburned, but my nose didn't peel, thank god. I rubbed my organic soy oil on it. I had bought the oil in Massachusetts with a ravenous glut of over one hundred dollars of legitimately procured food stamps. Being a vegetarian, for a total of twelve years, I had excitedly relished the opportunity to make a bee line to the most opulent health food co-op I could find--and bought everything I had wanted for the past six years of eating a rather skimpy, but cheap diet of whatever vegetables I could afford.

I'd be in the Everglades soon. It'd be the second time since I was about seven years old. I thought I'd drive the Tamiami Trail through the Glades, starting in the outskirts of Miami. Then on to California.

|  |

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# Tecumseh, Missouri

(GAR CREEK, EAST WIND Commune, Missouri)

(Four months in 1997, Winter/Fall)

I tried driving cross-country about three times, only once did my vehicle make it all the way to California. That was in three different vehicles. I just gave the dead car to anyone who wanted it and got a Greyhound ticket back to Boston. I wanted to live in Los Angeles, my absolute favorite city, but I never did make it all the way there in a car. When I did make it, it was only by Greyhound. I hit the Northridge earthquake on my last trip by bus, so I wisely decided thereafter to make my targeted destination San Diego instead.

In the meantime, I tried living in a commune in Tecumseh, Missouri (East Wind Commune), but there were rules problems with that at the time. It was a wonderland when I lived there, though. Later, I traveled to Alaska and then bought some land and lived in my own customized, wood-heated travel trailer in Maine and got into raising dogs.

But I am getting ahead of myself. So, back to my adventures in Tecumseh.

A friend of mine from Homer, Alaska spent the night outside in southern Missouri near the Arkansas border in the winter of 1997 in a meteor shower. That meteor shower came from the Hale-Bopp comet passing overhead. There were lots of meteor showers there, though. Southern Missouri, in Tecumseh, is famous for lightning storms, tornadoes and meteor showers. It is also famous for fossilized giant prehistoric remains embedded in rock in shallow stream beds and underground.

There are enormous caverns with spring sources and clear running water. Mammoth skeletons are sometimes found when people start to plow for planting. Large coyotes roam the woods which also are home to some tiny cactus and regular-sized armadillos. Tarantula survive the snow which melts maybe on the second week or second day upon icing everything over. There is a mid-winter respite when the temperature goes up to about 90 degrees Fahrenheit. This is normal for this area and not a result of global warming.

Like I said, this was the year of the passing of the Hale-Bopp comet and my friend who stayed outside during the meteor shower that accompanied it was really seriously brave. She grabbed a sleeping bag and spent the night in a hammock: a cozy little muffin in a cocoon. The meteors fell lightly on the roofs, but they were not hot or large.

Where I grew up outside of Chicago, in the western suburbs, meteors had a reputation for starting fires in rural Illinois in the late 1940's and 50's. Some meteors were the size of stone pillars. The kind you hold up a porch roof with. Or, more accurately, a library roof. We had electrical storms that would knock lines down into the street and a tornado hit only one town away from where I lived. So, I know a lot about those things.

I knew how to avoid live wires on the street since I was at least five years old: you shouldn't walk in water puddles for one thing--especially if they were near the curb. Electric lines fell or were struck by trees when it rained, and they tended to fall near the street or the curb. Water conducts electricity so the puddles could knock you out or kill you.

The meteors during Hale-Bopp popped like a fireworks display, and the air was cool, not cold, so my friend was comfortable. The picture of the exact hammock she spent the night in watching this meteor shower is below. I was safely inside in my room in a different area of the commune listening to maybe six coyotes sing to the moon before the sky turned to daylight red in the Ozarks.

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(HAMMOCK MADE AT EAST Wind Commune. Where my friend slept during Hale-Bopp)

I saw a meteor shower when I was maybe five years old (1956) and it still brings out that deep resonant feeling of peace in me, oddly enough for a dangerous natural phenomenon. TV was still all black and white, as were all the movies. I remember listening to comedies and other shows such as Dragnet on the radio as well. Bill "Bojangles" Robinson was also still a big film star dancing on the reruns with little Shirley Temple Black, the future ambassador to Ghana. Marilyn Monroe was still making movies and had not yet met the Kennedys who were all still alive, except for Joe, Jr.

We had a party line on our telephone, so my brother and I would sneak into the kitchen and listen to grown-up people talk (seemingly nonsense) to each other. We'd listen until we got caught and had to hang-up and scatter. Party lines were cheaper than a single line, so we always had a party line until the phone company had enough single lines to supply everyone with their own. Then, disappointingly, (crushing all the young, middle-aged, and elderly voyeurs in our telephone district and household) we got one too. The phone was never, never the same again.

My father probably had to give us a heart-to-heart talk about how we couldn't even get a party line anymore even if we wanted one, because they went out of existence. What a drag. There were several compensating factors, though, such as fireflies around our house on mid-summer nights and absolute droves of butterflies and the huge snapping turtles in the creek off the Des Plaines river in our downtown area. Nature has a way of captivating children.

The local snapping turtles (which might be extinct now due to some town official, a schmuck who decided to conduit the street runoff into the creek) were sometimes larger than the size of a '57 Chevy hubcap, maybe about 2.5 feet in circumference. This was all about six or seven long blocks away down at the creek, which also had some nice bright yellow perch.

We lit punks and sparklers at night and watched others haggle over real fireworks. Lighting fire spirals called "snakes" on the sidewalk, we pounded small, red paper, explosive caps with rocks to let out a loud bang.

Hale-Bopp and other meteor showers (in my humble opinion) are even better than caps or fireworks. As long as you are wise about it anyway.

At one point, I had to leave the commune and went back to Boston again. And yet again tried to drive cross-country in another used vehicle.

More about Arizona

(Another try for California)

May 1998. So, I was living in Boston, Massachusetts again--in the beautiful woods of Jamaica Plain. I stayed there every once-in-a-while. It was quiet and warm. Sometimes even hard to leave. The woods were filled with spring chartreuse and I saw a large hawk flying with three or four crows over the trees.

I bought another car (a 1988 Ford GL stick shift, compact station wagon, blue again.) This was, I was hoping, my final attempt to drive to California. I decided to try for San Diego, since I had been in Los Angeles during the Northridge earthquake and aftershocks. San Diego does not usually have earthquakes. They have floods like Tijuana, being close to Mexico. But that is only difficult if you have your car parked in the flood zones, which I did not. My "new" Toyota was roomy, clean and comfortable, capable of passing as a lower middle-class second car at the necessary time in my off-highway respites.

I drove from Boston through upper New York state, down through the bayous of Louisiana (not through I-75 and northern Florida this time) and into the Arizona desert on I-10. I saw the Mexican border through waves of tremendous daytime heat. Once, I saw the brave amigos of the Sonora desert hightailing it to wherever, to safety, I hope ... to survival--to an easier world outside of the poverty of Mexico that makes so many men, women and children walk hundreds of miles from their home towns in the intense cold and heat of the Mexican and American deserts just to get to the USA. They brave scorpions and rattlers as well as having only the dusty winds and the desert sage brush to hide them.

Lost a tire to the flash flood grooves on I-10 and had to buy a new one. It is so hot that the state places plastic barrels of water along the highway.

Driving ahead of hurricane weather as usual, near the bayou in the swamps of Louisiana, I slept at some very rustic rest stops outside of Cajun country in the lower part of the state. It was compensatingly humid, not so in Arizona. I kind of like torrid weather. It was dangerous in the bayous, though, waiting out the high winds and torrential downpours.

Between Texas and Arizona, there are huge sand dunes on I-8 on the way to San Diego. It looks like a miniature Sahara. At night, I did a double watch for side-winders. Rattlers are generally pretty visible and I'm a rather cautious person anyway. Diamondbacks are generally happier in rock crevices and underneath bushes such as the sage. You don't see them in the open desert very much--at least near the highway. Scorpions, spiders and lizards are usually at a little distance also. The noise and commotion might bother them.

Speaking of noise and commotion, there are a large number of ATVs pounding the dunes at night in Yuma. There have been complaints that they destroy part of the dunes. I like ATVs for transportation reasons, but I do not understand the violent uses of vehicle speed and try and avoid it. There are trails that ATVs can use on the dunes, so maybe that is okay. One would have to check with various ecological organizations to get a wider perspective.

The desert air was fine, clear and dry. The night just plain shone like polished blue stone. The air currents towards the mountains and the Pacific pulled oxygen into my nostrils and lungs until I was opiated.

My fuel pump was failing, which caused the car, that I had nick-named "Suzannah", to gently slow down as I tried to accelerate uphill. So, while everyone else was going 70 mph, I was slowing down to say, um, 35 mph. I drove up the windy mountain slopes with my flashers blazing and horn in the ready position.

Gratefully, I reached a rest stop at a spectacular niche in the Chiricahua mountains in Cochise county, Arizona. Nearby is the Chiricahua Apache Reservation. This was the home and stronghold of Cochise and Geronimo, both of whom have been my heroes since childhood.

Cochise was Geronimo's father-in-law. Geronimo took up the war against white settlers after Cochise passed away. The California gold rush of 1848 caused disruption to the Arizona Chiricahua Apache. This is also true of the Klondike gold rush of 1896 in Alaska, which caused major cultural dissolutions among Native Alaskan tribal groups and the major colonization of Alaska. Introductions of things such as alcohol, prostitution and cheating were common complaints. The alcohol issue is something Alaskans still struggle with.

Cochise was a peaceful man, but he needed to defend his people against the terrible incursions of the gold rush. One story I heard was that Geronimo was said to have taken advantage of the nearness of Mexico when the heat of the US Cavalry pursuit was too close. He would dress like a Mexican and cross the border. Being fluent in Spanish, the unwary US military had a hard time telling him apart from the other Mexican Indians. In fact, there are Apache in both Mexico and the USA.

The Chiricahua mountains have another interesting feature besides being the exact spot of this duel between Anglo and Indian--the mountain range is famous for its balanced boulders. Some of these boulders are tons in weight, perfectly oval (like sculpture) and balanced on a surface maybe five or less feet in diameter and two stories high. So, besides being parked on a blustery ledge, maybe 10,000 feet in the air, I also had about 150 two or twenty ton smooth, oblong boulders balanced (on small round edges mind you) right smack above me--all night long. It made for a very sound sleep.

To me, getting out of the car to pee and closing the door (very softly) as I got back into the vehicle was enough to make me want to write everything down and send the story in to the Guinness Book of World Records. I felt the need to note how many times I actually successfully did that without getting squarshed so flat that no archaeologist would ever be able to tell the difference between me and a prehistoric trilobite.

The purpose of living is to enhance the truth and demonstrate the good that comes of it, so I must admonish my fears of mechanical breakdowns and let the reader know that I really felt that true bravery accompanied my merest presence amid these ponderous rock giants of the Apache. Not the least of which was the fact that my fuel pump collapsed entirely after two months in San Diego. When the fuel pump breaks, the steering capacity of the car breaks down too, like immediately, and the brakes cease to function also. That is because the collapse of the fuel pump causes the car's electrical system to fail. Not the best way to climb the Chiricahuas or any mountain.

The end of the fuel pump actually came as I managed to safely exit a very fast highway in La Jolla, California--my electrical system (brakes, steering and engine) stopped suddenly as I exited the off-ramp and drifted onto a side street. Phew! Made it, somehow! One can still brake and steer manually, but it takes some strength and a slow speed. We discovered later that I also had a crack in my engine head. No wonder the engine was always overheating.

Funny thing was that one of those wonderful California car part franchises was selling new engines on the payment system. By the time I wanted a new engine (that was a pretty good car) it was too late, they had stopped selling them. I gave the car to the serendipitous mechanic who towed it to a Unitarian Church parking lot. I got permission from the minister there to park it until it was fixed, but he asked me to move it sooner than that. He let his maintenance man work on my car during his work hours at the church, so I sold the car to the mechanic in thanks when it became apparent that it was going to need a new engine. No point in wasting anything.

Back to the perfectly oval boulders of the Chiricahua mountains.

Lack of self-assurance induced by my mechanical situation, had given itself away to my gratitude for these amazing rocks, for these perfect oval immobile natural sculptures. In San Diego, there is a little cafe across the street from the Golden West Hotel (a rooming house, actually, where I lived when I finally reached San Diego) where there are photographs of some rocks that someone had balanced artificially. Maybe they got the idea from the Chiricahuas. It looks sort of like a Japanese rock garden (except all the rocks are piled on top of each other).

The peace of the Chiricahuas was so intense that my sleep that one night that I spent there was almost as light as the moon-lit sky. It was as if I was lifted up and was floating far above myself in the cold, cold air. The balanced rocks became like friends that spoke in whispers. I could tell what they were saying and although there was only one deep silence--underneath that was our conversation.

Like I said, the Chiricahua Apache live nearby, in fact the Jicarilla Apache also live within a few hundred miles (part of them live across the border in Mexico). Perhaps I'll go over to these reservations when my car is in better shape and visit the families and descendants of both Cochise and Geronimo. The night seemed to speak as if we could all sit there together, at least for that one moment.

The tiredness from travel eased out of my shoulders. Rocks began to breathe confidence, easing my old timidity. Their natural strength restrained them from crushing me, punishing my futile city-like worries. If a person or the spirits of the good reside in mountains, then these good spirits gave me relief that night. The boulders actually became lighter if only in my mind--it seemed like they were as light as papier mache. They seemed to be things that weighed very little. They hid the promise that the wisdom of Cochise and Geronimo would return.

This wisdom will perhaps save the planet from the exploitation, greed and ecological disaster that no one deserves. It will save the planet, or our space in the universe from anomie--lack of brotherhood, sisterhood, lack of generosity and the lack of common good and common everyday love. My thoughts were stilled until dawn broke open the heat of a new Arizona sun and I awoke.

The area of Arizona I was in was near Tombstone, Cochise and Bowie which is about two hundred or so miles east of Tucson. Before that I had passed through the dunes which are outside of Yuma, Arizona.

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I STAYED IN SAN DIEGO during the last three months of winter, then decided to take the Greyhound back to Boston after selling my car due to mechanical, parking and limited budget problems. As I mentioned above.

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# The Florida Everglades

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STILL NOVEMBER-DECEMBER.

I drove through the Everglades last night at midnight. There was a heavy tropical rainstorm. Dozing heavily, almost asleep at the wheel, alligators and poisonous snakes twirled through my mind as a warning to be careful, which I was not--already driving in such a storm. The road had become like a river. The Tamiami was famous for its quicksand-filled sinkholes. I pulled into a rest stop (the only one) in the middle of the Glades, after trying to sleep near a Miccosukee restaurant up the road from there. The rest stop was about ten miles away.

The ghostly echoing sounds of egrets, blue heron and frogs made me wonder if they and the loud cackling of something like a whooping crane were the sounds of human voices. I felt like someone was watching me, hiding. Perhaps. I don't know. I swear that I could not tell if those noises were animal or human. This was because there seemed to be a call nearby and an answer mile away in the swamp. Animal calls. The open, humanless swamp extends for maybe fifty or sixty miles in each direction. There are actually very few people around. The only inhabitants that I saw was one State policewoman and a Miccosukee apartment building and restaurant, perhaps some caretaker houses.

The Cypress trees sometimes tunnel over four or five feet of water--rather than a forest floor. Alligator and large dappled white and black spotted fish glide and swoop silently underneath the surface of the clean, transparent water.

Something must be said about my mode of travel before I go any further. My car was a downright magnificent used ten-year-old blue Honda Civic station wagon (stick shift). It was also my temporary home at the time. The dashboard was a glittering wonder of modern convenience that also had (of all things) a tape deck. I polished the exterior of the car every day until the finish was dust-free and shone, the windows sparkling ... my being a little bit overworked about ownership, and a new comfortable space. It had been years since I had owned a car and planned on saving money by sleeping in it throughout my trip.

My desire for travel was first manifest by an aversion to the winter weather in Boston. I just had to split--just to get away from the city. I was pleased that it only cost me a total of $3.50 to get from Boston to the tufted tundra on the edge of the Hudson river outside of New York City on a full tank of gas.

I had a purple, satin quilt and a nylon-covered sleeping bag that I had found in a thrift store and doing mild dumpster diving near my storage unit in Cambridge which was located in a rather wealthy area. It was really more like hallway diving while watching for good storage unit discards. Not too many people really want to drag a sleeping bag out of a real dumpster. People throw away brand new stuff in Cambridge.

I had created a crawl space in my station wagon by pulling the back seat down and putting a piece of fresh-smelling plywood level with the windows held up by four two-by fours, my suitcase and a plastic bin filled with dry herbal tea, organic whole wheat pasta, beans, grains, flour, vegetable oil and canned organic tomato paste. I made a little stove from a cheap hibachi (which, by the way, is great for wood fires made from dry pine needles and twigs, because you don't have to be as vigilant about containing the fire because it is already in a metal pan). In with these things, I put cooking and eating utensils.

On top of the plywood was a rug that roughly matched the interior of the car. My maps and a basket with towels, shampoo, soap, a loofah and sunglasses gave me the needed appearance of a tourist. My mileage, as I said before, was really very good. Excellent, in fact.

I took photographs for my travel journal or diary. You can see some of those photos of my travels here, such as the photos of California, the Everglades, Arizona and the Mojave. In fact, all the photos in this book and my other poetry book, Apple Cider, were done mostly while traveling.

Large box turtles lumber past me now as I sit in my car. It was midnight, like I said, when I first started my journey through the Everglades this evening. I drove through the inky blue darkness, lit only by the moon and a few lights along the two lane Tamiami Trail. It was not the best time to begin such a journey. You can't really see anything, but the feeling of hundreds of miles of watery darkness and wilderness empty of human beings is unbelievably engrossing. The hawks I see constantly circling in the sky are actually vultures--so I was told later. I slept in my car all night in the middle of the swamp after I was hit by a violent rainstorm and had to pull over.

I made it to I-75, but my car was hit by, of all people, a prison guard. He was driving too fast in a dense fog. I had Ralph Nader car insurance, so the insurance people on the phone were very soothing and nice. I gave my car to the Salvation Army in exchange for a night in a motel and a Greyhound ticket back to Boston. Thus, ended of this attempt to get to California, by car anyway...

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# About a walk on the beach

(California beach)

SANTA MONICA

I traveled to Los Angeles many times by Greyhound.

During the winter in California. The water could be very rough. One skin diver I met used to kayak out to the deeper parts offshore and spear fish. The shark are very big off Santa Monica - Great Whites are common here actually. Not small blue shark like Miami which are hard enough for surfers to deal with. Or seals that bite through plastic kayaks like in Alaska or the biting seals of Malibu. Shark come up underneath the skin divers and they are difficult to see. But this diver just ignored the shark and climbed back into his boat with his catch, landing eventually on the shore as matter of fact as you like. Not me, said I. The water is very chilly.

The larger boats are as silent as ghosts and so far out on the horizon that one cannot hardly see them. They seem to simply appear and disappear, soundlessly. They appear in the glare of the orange and gold sun and the spray of the ocean and disappear back into the roundness of my vision over the dark green sea.

Some boats are moving up and down like tiny dots between the sky and the water in the distance. I see lines of dolphin frequently. I whistle into the wind and cannot hear the sound come back to me. My ears begin to throb.

There are wooden horses on the carousel near the recreation dock in Santa Monica. There is a Ferris Wheel, too. Children ride this carousel...around and around they go past the mirrors on the walls. 'Round and 'round like the silver spinners on nylon fishing lines.

The planks on the huge dock seem sort of old and rotten. I am always afraid of falling through. That rarely happens. Or never. I mean that someone falls through the dock. That's really good. Nobody wants to fall through. Ghosts of fishermen might nab the people that fall through between the planks and drag them out to sea again so that they must row eternally back to shore. Do you think that they would be happy anyway? It might be almost like heaven.

It is almost like heaven here on the oceanfront of Santa Monica. Out on the beach every morning by seven in the morning like I usually am. It is much warmer than Boston. Much. Which is why I came here to begin with.

It is cold until the sun comes up in the morning. Then it gets very hot, depending on where you are. Hollywood is the hottest (over 100 degrees Fahrenheit sometimes), the oceanfront is much cooler, but will still fade your coat in the sun and bleach your teeth white. That sunny. It was wonderful after all those years in the winter cold and slush in Boston.

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#

2000 KETCHIKAN, ALASKA

(Tlingit totem pole)

Around the year 2000, I decided to journey to Ketchikan, Alaska due to something the person at East Wind who had slept outside during the Hale-Bopp comet said to me. I cajoled a Greyhound supervisor into selling me a cheap ticket to Prince Rupert, British Columbia. I was eager to see the delights of Canada, a country I had visited as a child.

Shocked and horrified, I rode through most of southern Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan to see a now deforested, herbicided, fungicided, pesticided dust-bowl of agri-business where there was once a spectacularly large forest with thick, black fertile soil. And unusually large trees, even for the 1950's which was the last time I was there.

Multi-national firms such as Agway and Tri-Campbell (remember "Mmmm-Mmm Good?") farm say, for about 2,000 miles ("Mmm-Mmmm Not So Good!""). All the trees and shrubs down to the bare soil have been cut down and removed straight up to the highway. Think I'll save myself the pain and go through the USA and Seattle on the way back. (Note: I have been here in Ketchikan for a few years so far and still haven't gone back down to the lower forty-eight).

I saw my first bald eagle ever in Prince Rupert. Although, I saw a huge pine filled with maybe 20 young bald eagles, or more, in Ketchikan near the waterfront area around the salmon cannery later on. It was very common to see some pine loaded with bald eagles around the cannery. There are so many varieties of wild birds here, including giant blue heron (which is a totem/clan animal), that they have not all been cataloged due to the lack of access in the wilderness which extends for thousands of miles without roads or human habitation. Nice. I took the Alaska State Ferry from Prince Rupert, B.C. at midnight to Ketchikan and the Union Rooms Hotel (really a cheap rooming house), Showers & Bath. This is located across from where an old lumber mill used to be and is built on a dock over the oceanfront.

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ON THE ROAD TO THE ferry terminal at Prince Rupert I saw three elk, three moose and three black bear strolling among the sweet mists of the Canadian wetlands and birch. Driving past clear spring-fed ponds, lakes and streams which abound near Prince Rupert, we approached the state line of Alaska.

The Alaska State Ferry glides inland through many islands along the Chatham Sound until it passes Duke and Annette island and docks parallel to Gravina and Pennoch island which are right across from Revillagigedo island. Revillagigedo is home to the towns of Ketchikan and Saxman. Most of the 17 million acres that surround us are ecologically protected Tongass wilderness and behind us is the Misty Fjords National Monument--part of which is a continually frozen glacier. In other words, most of the area is inhabited only by wildlife.

The clouds in the Tongass are created by the mainland and island soil, warming and filtering through the yellow cedar and spruce forests and lifting to the moist skies to carry their fertility throughout the needy backwoods above and beyond all the small towns. The islands are also affected by the Jet Stream from Japan, very much so. The fog looks like smoke from a campfire, coming up from between the trees the way it does. Hundreds of tiny fish sometimes fill the sea occasionally like silver leaping from ice or silver falling off from the sunlight. If you lay down on the town docks and put your face close to the water, you can see them clearly. You can even see the larger fish and baby octopus further down. Silver salmon embroider themselves on the ocean and the rainbows that arch over it after a foggy morning. The Aurora Borealis shines at night like a prism across the black of the Ketchikan sky, if you are lucky enough to catch it. It is a real high, let me tell you.

The islands are filled with mountains. Denali (not on an island and further north) is one of the seven highest elevations in the world (including Everest and Kilimanjaro). In a couple of weeks, the salmon will start to enter the freshwater creeks in this area and swim many miles upstream to spawn and then die. This happens every year. But the fish, they tell me, only start spawning when they are at least four years old. We have a Tribal Hatchery here that ensures the continued existence of four or so varieties of salmon: Coho, Humpies, King and Sockeye.

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(The above photo is the old, not usually used, natural Tribal Salmon Hatchery in Ketchikan Park in the center of town, off to the side of the new and larger facility.)

ALSO LOCATED IN KETCHIKAN Park, between the new Salmon Hatchery and the old one, is the Deer Mountain Tribal Rookery that heals injured eagles and then sets them free. It has a huge, almost two story outside cage with a large live tree in it, not only for the naturalistic comfort of the convalescing eagles, but also so that their mates will not get anxious. Eagles mate for life and their mates tend to circle around the outside cage and land on nearby trees or on the cage.

The sky is sometimes saturated with the sharp cry of bald eagles. Eagles fill the trees near the cannery. They tend to perch near the front entrance waiting, I guess, for a few scraps of discarded fish guts. Or they like the smell. The harbor seals are rather large-headed and have white fur with black spots. Home to sea otter, Orca, black bear and shaggy black wolves with white marks on their chests, no mosquitoes or snakes, Ketchikan is small, mostly Native American (Tlingit and Tlingit-Haida) and friendly.

The older cultures in the area are the Haida, Tsimshian (on Metlakatla island - the only Indian Reservation in Alaska. Tsimshian are originally Canadian, led to Metlakatla by a Canadian preacher who saved them from the Canadian government) and Tlingit communities. Ketchikan, itself, was a Tlingit fishing area once a year when the Salmon swam up the creek during spawning season. After the town was colonized during the Klondike gold rush, the whites took over the Salmon run by putting nets over the mouth of the creek, which was a real greedy move. The Spanish Conquistadors landed here in the seventeen hundreds which is where the Spanish name of the island, Revillagegedo, came from. The town was populated by loggers and fishermen from America (plus the failures and successes of the gold rush) pretty much by 1900. So, most of the cultural changes in the area have taken place in the last one hundred years (some before that also, since Alaska was bought by the US from Russia in 1867), which is really not that long ago. It is still a very isolated place.

Native American tribal artwork here is like a field of wildflowers. It blooms in all the parks, in front of some homes, and makes the shop windows look beautiful. Many shops are filled with colorful traditional wooden masks.

There is one semi-traditional Native American lodge in Saxman. It is impressive. It beats blandish Euro-American architecture by a mile. There is always a fire pit in the center of the first floor and a loft where folks used to sleep, but now some folks put their bedrooms up there in private homes that use this architecture. The air circulation is usually rather comfortable. You can view photos of a real Tlingit lodge from the late 1800's at the small museum attached to the Ketchikan Public Library.

Combined with the tribal artwork of Arizona and New Mexico (Pueblo, Zuni, Navajo, Hopi) and the Maya, Aztec, Toltec, etc. of Tijuana--it sure makes a trip worthwhile. There are colorful totem poles everywhere in Ketchikan. The colors of the desert, sea and mountains are pretty good for the soul. The Original People know that and paint so that all the geometries of the silence of the soul are larger in some places where nature demands more of your attention than some miserly self-estimation.

You can learn so much just looking and watching the movement of the sun or water. The bald eagles float over the mountains in the afternoon like the slow coats of cold fog that hide inside the immense cedar, alder and spruce pine until a ravager heat erupts out of the soil. Each cloud over the islands dotting the coastline is given a birth inside the roots and damp earth. Each plume of steamy fog has an island of origin. Those cumulus that are sent as seed to other climate zones came from plots of cedar that I know here. Each plume of newborn fog (that the fire inside the eons of fire left inside of the sun) has been burned out of the water near one particular clod of earth under one particular tree on top of one particular island.

I was there to see the rain, too. And it rains enough here to entitle the area to call itself a temperate Rainforest. I was there to see one island send another some of that fresh water. Perhaps there was a whisper in the air asking about what one might need, then a soft reply, then the fog and clouds, then--okay--the rain. If there is a reason for anything like that kind of meteorological fact, then answering that question is probably closer over here--on Revillagigedo.

The bear are clever. They let the cloud-steam plume up through their claws and feet, from under their bellies and up into the air to funnel over the fish in the sea. Bear can be differential. They can and do pretend not to see you or just go on about their business without any aggression at all.

The moon is like the mother of the Salmon, peeking over a few mountains and leaking a long lithesome reflective look across the water furrows that wave one after the other like circles in a water clock etching the moments into this season, until that moon eye opens wider a little later in the month. The Salmon seem to jump into the silver eye of the moon wondering at their similarities to that planet. They could compare their mercury-like bodies to the liquid shine that spills onto the water from up above at night.

Just imagine the mother that gave birth to hundreds of Salmon babies at one time. She surely must be the mother of the entire world. Yes, surely, they all fell from the moon. That light at night might just be a reflection of moon tears, which might just be Salmon.

The moon is their mother, searching for them at night diving into their water nests. Giving them a slender look. They swim at night in her wistful glances. This tender moon, quietly giving a small warmth, trying to stay full upon the places where we live. The sun, not in competition, has so much more strength. It embraces even more warmth and probably gives us much of our daytime feelings.

Maybe that is why the small Salmon are so happy, thousands of them swimming and jumping out of the sea with joy. Another vision of their mother, the moon, tonight! We shall see her tonight!

And I shall see another vision of the gentle Alaskan seaside that lets the moon escape from under her cloak of cedar boughs and forest floor. She lets the moon rise from the bottom of the waters and gather itself like a lamp over the sleepy fluorescence of her Salmon children.

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# About the Author

CATHY SMITH HAS BEEN writing poetry and seeing things that way all her life. Even from the crib, she watched the sunlight through her curtains. And can remember, with delight, the movement of the curtains in the breezes of Summer.

She has lived and traveled coast-to-coast in the United States many times. And, also, southern Canada and northern Mexico.

Cathy is also an amateur photographer that lives in northern Maine overlooking the Canadian border. She spends most of her time writing cozy mysteries, taking photos and writing poetry with her faithful 11 lb. Yorkshire Terrier, Sparky (aka "Biggie Smalls), by her side.

She graduated from Boston University magna cum laude and attended Harvard University for graduate school. She has been writing most of her life. She prefers writing poetry, but her Silver Lake Cozy Mystery Series under her pseudonym as Sophia Watson, has been so popular, she has to put the tea kettle on in the winter and settle down to amuse her fans by writing mysteries in that series. She loves a good soft (non-graphic) suspense story or mystery as much as a favorite poem. A good story is usually part of a good poem.

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# Other Books by This Author

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AS CATHY SMITH

Hidden Treasures: A Book of Short Stories

The Tree People: A Children's E-Book

As Sophia Watson - The Silver Lake Cozy Mystery Series -

It All Comes Out in the Wash-Book 1

Snow Angels-Book 2

That Summer in Silver Lake-Book 3

Solstice-Book 4

As Zara Brooks-Watson - Two Historical Cozies

Jitterbug - set in the Fifties

Tie Dye - set in the Sixties

All E-books are also available in paperback.

See: appleciderpoetry.wixsite.com/cathy-smith-poetry for updates and sales links for all books.

# Don't miss out!

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Connecting independent readers to independent writers.
Did you love _Waiting for the Sunrise_? Then you should read _Hidden Treasures: Short Stories_ by Cathy Smith!

Hidden Treasures is a volume of 7 short literary-poetic-prose stories with socially progressive arguments. The stories range from themes of serendipity, cloning and property tax to a musing fantasy about making all right with the world. These stories are appropriate for older children, teens as well as adults.

Read more at Cathy Smith's site.
Also by Cathy Smith

Beautiful Dreamer Short Stories

Hidden Treasures: Short Stories

Standalone

Waiting for the Sunrise

Watch for more at Cathy Smith's site.
