Awwwwww baby. We gotta go now...

on crumbly dry and summer hillsides

A lizard scuttles ‘long my roof, reminds me, “crane your neck!”

Mizz humming-goes-birding balanced there across the oak twig reminds me “lighter is best”.

And all the squalling jays come chorusing in the morning, reminding each other that “Over here? No over there. Over here perhaps.”

Meanwhile and just downhill, the ever-highway sends engine roars to echo up-canyon and dissipate.

Can only write it as it’s felt.

A weathered and wily, still fortunate son am I.

Mountains trees and rivers without end. I lay down to bask and cake atop the baking hillside – the hillside who’s no choice BUT to lay in the sun.

Put it all down in ink and somehow become alone again.

Slugging through the center of my apprenticehood to reality, and asking everywhere are you the teacher of fish?

and are you the fisher of fish-hooks under skin?

and are you the friend of deer?

A world full of women and men with bark for skin.

With death in every corner of the globe,

and Spring too.

Close your eyes and see if you can’t open the Hand of Thought

Let those concepts grow forceps

And scuttle away.

I was out for a run this morning when I happened upon a coyote.

We were both very simple,

silly even.

He stopped mid-trot

looked at me as if to think – “will it eat me?” and “will I eat it?”

I kept him in sight for two miles

before disappearing to the brush and middle way.

huntington

Zooming up coast from Dana Point all the way to Huntington proper I was

smiling out the window whipping by,

singing to praise whosoever proffered me this Sunday

yet another.

How devastatingly beautiful, I think, is

the black lab, leashed and lapping along, also

the wino, shuffling sidewalks, hands-a-pockets,

the joggers blonding ponytails go Swish! Swish!

storefronts glimmer in the early earthly glow

and by god the Bikers! - those sinew-sleek and anatomic bodies

humping their sleek machines uphill.

I stop to fill gas (!!4.29 a Steal!)

And watch big-screen television while minding the pump,

think: "this is the donning of the age of aquarius,"

lean against my car door and starearound

the other strangers leaning on car doors too,

all of us an island - a mountain underwater.

Back on the road keep zooming till I reach

Laguna! - 'la pieta' draped across the knees of coast,

ellegant as her name, I think, 

if famous to the world she came then famous she'll return

into the sea - streets, shops, palms and all...

Laguna with her perfectly groomed every-thing's,

nature tamed and manicured you know

it's all a lot a picture show.

Laguna with her snowy-white teeth,

sun-kissed shoulders and,

bourgeois-blue eyes.

(but before Laguna or even Dana Point this morning

remember leaving San Clemente...)

San Clemente where the curved roads go curving

in curves o'er hills of swerving swells,

where all manner of surf shops, pubs and parlors,

suburbia of Pendleton Military Base and outgrowth of such,

San Clemente where I awoke

(on memorial day nonetheless)

on the roof of said suburbia.

San Clemente where I awoke to the sound of palm fronds breezing,

on the roof where the whole gangofus had slept

in a jumble of drunken comforts and pillow-arms,

on the roof of Southern California with stars close as my nose,

where because of rain throughout the night

the whole gang one by one had left, grumpily wet,

- except for Elliott and Me, who've slept in puddles before and didn't mind.

And so now I go zooming up the Highway Pacific 1

--that ocean-hugging highway where a couple Octobers ago

E and I had gone rushing South through foggy gloom

with mad goal to cover old Oregon's coast in a single weekend,

and also in order to throw the huppiest halloween bash this side 'o the galaxy,

and also to swim in seas of midnight naked and free,

and also to look up and see that nocturnal flock of gulls go squawking overhead in

one big white feathery omen'd troup, as if to say to us: 

"Ahoy, feather your friggots boys, wa-hah!"

And so now I go zooming North up that unbeleivably self-same highway,

halfway believing, for the wonderful power of these memories, that

I'll run into E and Me (any second now...)

coming the other direction.

O sweet spontaneous 

earth how often have

the 

doting

    fingers of prurient philosophers pinched

and

poked

thee

, has the naughty thumb

of science prodded

thy

beauty .  how

often have religions taken

thee upon their scraggy knees

squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive

gods

        (but

true

to the incomparable

couch of death thy

rhythmic

lover

  thou answerest

them only with

   spring)

-Estlin Cummings

my fire eats everything

Though at first I was responsible

(flint spark to scaly schist

over dead twig and dry leaf),

just as a word, once spoken,

no longer belongs to it’s author - so this fire went free.

And now

 

My fire eats everything

 

Decaying heartwood of a

once hearty hemlock,

malignant maple or

aging oak,

young proud poplar

never thought he’d see the day -

my fire gladly receives and

gladly burns.

Eats 'em all up.

 

My fire remembers nothing.

Knows no language, age or fashion,

where it comes or

how it might should act.

Cares not for reason,

entertains no concept of progress and

never envies.

Only ever sings the timeless tune of

Cackle-spark and Flicker-flame.

And a fickle song indeed,

capable of sustaining life

on freezing winter nights,

capable of purifying water,

coal, gold, earth.

Capable of consuming entire

forests

mountains

homes and

villages.

Eats 'em all up.

 

 

My fire comes from a long line of fires:

heat for the first man

brother to the first rain

harbringer of illumination all types

and all gods fashioned in fire-likenesses:

From the earliest Pyrolaters

Tonatiuh for the Aztecs

Ra who oversaw the pyramids

Sacred flame of the Vestal Virgins

Bodhisattva of the sun 

and the burning bush to Moses spoke.

Fire who, once harnessed,

became the catalyst of modern man, the modern family

and modern warfare.

 

And for all this I ask,

“who is the God of fire?”

 

Which upon hearing nothing

I return to sitting

and thinking how

Dark the night,

how silent the world,

save for the cackling of

my fire.  My fire who eats everything

- there see it!

See it in the night.

Watch it flicker,

spark defiant,

watch it something fierce

piercing scalding warnings toward

the whole world of darkness

unafraid.  As if to say,

"I was not the first, nor

will be the last."

And issuing me now a boon

in the form of a spark.

My fire eats everything

and when my fire finally dwindles

the universe sleeps.

once I was a seabrooder

Ah shoot it’s nearly been a month and what to say!

On a Saturday too...  Suppose I should peruse pictures and journals and contemplate all Saturdays of Past, what then?.  And I bid you think: how many Saturdays have thine eyes be-winked?  And how many of those swam, sung, slurp’d and slept through?  How many spent in company of friends, or strangers who'd later become friends, or all alone with only your woebegone face in the mirror brushing teeth?  How many Saturdays spent on mountain tops, waking cold to nylon walls of tent and sky, or wandering with full pockets in halls of malls or making Sunday plans in corner booths over stack a pancakes?  But besides yourself how many Saturdays are being right now lived across the green and blue globe?  I’d like to take my hand and spin the globe and while it’s spinning touch my finger down, and wherever it lands I say, “Saturday in Slovenia of course!”  For example where are my Saturdays in Spain I had and loved but lost?  I spent a few in Canadia not many… And what’s the business of a calendar anyway?  In the morning you know a Saturday’ll last forever, when the sun comes peeking through blinds you see her hiding there, toes poking out from underneath big heavy drapes you spy her there…   Like scrubbing my left ear and accidentally turning some hidden valve in there which looses all Saturdays to come swooshing around my temples in plain memory’s view:

May 16 ’09 one of the first I see (picture above to prove it):

“On this particular morning E and I awake perfectly bleary eyed and discombobulated from sleeping like tombstone’d mummies on hard-packed dirt and rocks – but waking up like born again persons wearing smiles.  Taking once more that salt bath in the sea splash offered exclusively in West Italia for a limited time only.  Breakfast with the boys (eggs over toast is translatable) before kayaking through limitless sea blues and sea breezes feeling free.  Afterwards running into Wil and the gang on the beach and going with them to big pizza feast.  Talks on trains and rocks down by the water in Riomaggiore, after which we say a few good-byes naturally.”

Or September 18 ’10 so ordinary:

“Cleaned the house today all favors and flavors – and 't was a dust bunny siege!  A grit and grime guerilla war.  Man the laundry ahoy there!  Man your scally-rags and swing the jib-broom!  All for one and whitely done.  Sparkle shine into the horizon victorious – plop down and read a book.”

Or just a few, not so long ago May 28

“In a hotel room where all’s familiar,

morning juice and a hot shower does

healthy for the soul.

Headphones in and hanging heavy on every word of

“Slaughterhouse 5” (once a year)

While childhood brothers Mike and Joel,

(also having just hot-showered their hearts clean)

lay watching hockey on the box

chatting casually like they did 15 years ago

on floors of homes rug’d and safe.”

Or the very next week as I’m trying ta leave town but get caught in a mad carnival of memorial day yard sales:

“Zooming through streets of Saturday Wrightwood to music, saying to myself, “out of the way pa!” and “where’s the junk, joe?” and all the stuff-hungry families meandering on manicured lawns saying “honey, should I?” and “a nickel for another yah?” and “well hell, it fits me well!” and through all this comes me zooming ‘round corners and up hills, skirting rows of parked cars and parked junk, whole hordes of men with junk in their eyes and poor children destined to ingest junk... but there goes me whip, revv, zoom!  Finally bursting into the open freedom downhill descent towards L.A. and Old Friends and Miss Pacifica too, another weekend in the railroad earth ahead.”

How hilarious and sad and lovely those past Saturdays, those past me's and you's - which would I could contain each one in it's very own snow globe, I'd line the walls and bookshelves all of them... and at any point in time I walk up and peek inside one to view a 'former me' and a 'past you' playing ourselves and spinning around to music while Saturday snowflakes swarm overhead... every Saturday I ever lived... I peek in one and see us sitting around with bottoms to sofas, conversing absentmindedly as if there's no snow overhead at all... and I've got 'em all lined up in rows and rows and shelves and stacked high, so as I grow older the house becomes filled and cluttered to the roof with snow globes! - globes in cabinets and across the mantel and heaped in corner piles and photos of more snow globes hanging on the wall and snow globes in the fruit basket... and coming home from work in the evenings I put coffee to boil, begin a fire in the woodstove, pluck a globe from off the dinner table, walk across the room and go "pahloomph" into my easy chair, set my globe upon the arm rest to light a pipe, pick it up again, study with sadness, raise an eyebrow in question, then turn it upside down and chuckle to remember another Saturday I'd forgot, and I bet I'd peek in there and ask out loud as if anyone could hear me, "aren't you cold in all that world of snow?"

A Jeweled Necklace

Nothing makes a happier me than sizzling sterile asparagus heads.  As finally a warmth returns to my cheeks after a chilly and wind-blown dusk.  And now being sung to revival by the day's-over song of the nuthatch, a three-noted whistle: with the second note always higher in pitch than the first and the third note always the deepest - a shrill and resounding song for a guy 2" tall... Left work late this day so was forced to hike farther into the evening than I planned, and eventually pitched camp in a no-where spot, which I suppose is fitting as any campground anyways.

But I just wish I had'n'a seen that coyote, the one I so aptly interrupted during the private purity of his hunt and who became paranoid of me everafter, though I suppose we shared something during our equally startled meeting of eyes (and up on top of mountains during an eery and all-encompassing fog nonetheless, which made everything magic and arden-like to begin with).  So now by the fire scratching my head over how I've long accepted I'm an animal, but now must come to the terms with the fact I'm an asparagus head.  Glad to be here now, especially since earlier setting up camp in the quickly fading light with frozen fingers got me all hurried and hectic out of sorts.  But of course I realize was just the wild reminding me "kid it'nt all roses and romance up here like you sometimes suppose" and was necessary.

Though thanks to the fog I saw perhaps the most miraculous view I suppose I've ever seen.  As earlier in the evening I was traversing a high ridge side and finally beginning to feel all alone (and thus at home with everything) and climbing higher higher higher.  And this being during the universal fog I hinted at previously: I could see clouds rolling like waves up the mountain side from down below south, all the way up and right through my hair and keep on going up to the top - but they never ceased, never broke, never gave any hint that there'd be a final cloud, a caboose-end to the misty procession.  So here I am plodding along this ridge-road, up there and exposed but really seeing nothing in any direction save for my feet and perhaps a few yards of path ahead.  And right about the time I have accepted my lot, have forgotten wishing for anything and have begun to simply carry on with moving and whistling dixie - about this time I suddenly notice a "light" or a presence of change, like when you know someone's staring at you behind your shoulder and get that tingling intuition-sense, I felt a similar (!) from out of nowhere.  At which point I turned around and saw the most miraculous view I ever saw, which I attribute much to the power of surprise, for it's one thing to lay eyes on your long lost childhood friend when you've been planning for months to meet, but it's another thing completely to lay eyes on the same friend after turning the corner of aisle 9 of the local grocery store and running suddenly into each other.  So I turn around and it's as if Zeus had reached down with big muscly arms and drew the clouds apart like curtains, giving me a perfect window view of all the remaining ranges marching down and eventually into the southern california desert, and at sunset nonetheless!  Or, as the peaks were rising high to swallow the smiling sun in all his pride and keep him there out of sight, but in his final struggles managing to cast brilliant fading illuminations over all the world's features and reminding us he'll be back around.  I was immediately reminded of a painting at a pizza shop in North Carolina where there's a perfect meadow and a spectacular waterfall and a rainbow over everything and majestic friendly brown bear fishing for salmon in the lake below and all the trees blooming wild fall colors - how I'd always look at this picture and laugh for all of it's outrageous extravagances and over-doings - though I suppose no matter how beautiful a woman attempts to paint or write or tell or act, there's always a true beauty to the original experiencing of the source in the moment that'll outshine any recreation with easy and simple brilliance.  So I turn my head around owl-like and get blasted by this sudden view, inadvertently stopping in my tracks and pausing to gape, because I surely didn't believe it.  Because here I was hiking along in a gloomy world of dusk and never supposed that anything to the contrary could've ever happened, and certainly not so (!) quickly in any case.  So I stand there paining my eyes to please open wider till it hurts, and trying to trace every ridge valley shrub tree rock bird and city light below and every color, blur, sweep and sway of scenery, and a part of me sad because I know soon it'll blow over and I'll never see it again (and even now can hardly see it in memory's eye).

But I don't need the moment back or any moment for that matter.  Because holy blessed replacement moments are always arriving on the scene all the time and forever, of course until they don't anymore, at which point we won't mind anyway...  So, as I say, and to prove the point: Cowboy Coffee, Can-a-Beans and Candide by the fire, leaning against a hollow log and watching blue-orange outlines of shadowy pine-figures turn to black (how many moods and characters has a tall pine? whether outlined with fog or dusk or noonday sun or what else!) And in fact the stars are out, and looking down on me and my silly little camp, as I'm only able to write these words whenever the flicker flames allow - so really I suppose the fire wrote it all and I'm therefore not to blame.  Can you beat it?!

So I wake up in the morning and read these words: "For example, when we sail a boat into the ocean beyond sight of land and our eyes scan the four directions, it simply looks like a circle.  No other shape appears.  The great ocean, however, is neither round nor square.  It has inexhaustible characteristics.  To a fish it looks like a palace, to a heavenly being a jeweled necklace.  To us as far as our eyes can see, it looks like a circle.  All the myriad things are like this.  Within the dusty world and beyond, there are innumerable aspects and characteristics; we only see or grasp as far as the power of our eye of study and practice can see.  When we listen to the reality of myriad things, we must know that there are inexhaustible characteristics in both ocean and mountains, and there are many other worlds in the four directions."