Midwinter Scenes, Pacific City, OR
My wife runs off down the beach, a declining figure becoming a near future worry. She runs southwards where an arcing white whale marks the Nestucca river fleeing into sea. The waves cry out white manes toppled by the charging of the high tide breaching the lip of the beach. A few seconds of ferocity flattened out into a frothing line in the sand. I stand by a fossilised spine spearing the sand, darkened by a forgotten forest, the storm-stripped trunk too big to roll in the surf like other logs, so lays a slowly rotting memorial. Sanderlings play chase with the surf, stabbing the just-wet sand until new waves flurry them up the beach. They scuttle back through fear, robotic legs blur under white bellies. A tired calligrapher paints drooping lines of geese spelling northward. White commas punctuate the space around Cape Kiwanda’s prehistoric painted cliff. Clouds begin to clear. The sun promises to dismiss cynics. Midwinter exclaims another year. The crescendoing percussion of waves and surf sucking back on the sand. The relief of my wife’s returning line. Let There Be Baked White Bread After three failed attempts with my wife, My father-in-law takes the mantle of teacher. With the patience of a Biblical Father, He teaches me to measure and mix the dough, as precisely as a desperate prayer. The mixture made, we must leave it overnight to be blessed by warmth and the invisible. The next day we inspect my first creation. Bloated with the hot air of virgin hope, we flour our hands and He guides me to roll, prod, fold and form the mound. The veined globe is ready for the fires, so we reverentially prepare the oven and place inside, closing with new psalms. Thirty minutes later, there was light and a lightly browned white bread loaf. A sacrament of salt and olive oil to harden the crust. Ten minutes later, the bread was truly born and I held it aloft in mittens, as proud as any Abraham. Knife in hand, I’m ready to sacrifice all for my people. The Bandon Labyrinth We wander the heavenly golf course following stone stained trails, searching for the famous dunes. Appearing lost, we were granted lifts by golfing gods. A northwestern salamander stutters across a damp woodland trail, a toddling monster dazzled by its lumbering limbs. We lose ourselves in the wood. March beckons with mulch, winking gorse flowers, dripping lichen and snatches of sunlight between moistly rotting trees, collapsing haphazardly on route to becoming soil. We find a labyrinth modeled on Chartres. Follow it around and around - no choices, just patience and arriving at the centre. that’s the meditative point only realised when we leave. Kingfisher Gift Elevated on a trunk of petrified grey wood near the bank of Deschutes river is the belted kingfisher. I watch from behind a pine tree. The wind ruffles its accumulating crest. It looks left and right, scanning the shallow waters for any hint or flick or wink. I felt fortunate for a few minutes of wings and pen, so unfamiliar it felt tropical - an Amazonian moment in Oregon. I shuffled and shot the kingfisher upstream on clangorous wings. I was left bereft, my blank page swirling. Joy in Others I wish I was more like my in-laws. They delight in people’s company. They set aside time like a forgotten currency and spend it listening to old friends, family, newly met people. They listen and engulf the other, applauding stories, rolling laughter, making the other feel like their world. The older they become, the more they do this, the more I wish I could make the other feel that vital, sacred. But then I would have no time to think words to express what is missing, poems to offer in place of apologies. Published in The Lothlorien Poetry Journal, February 2022.
0 Comments
A Few Sprinkled Words
'How far is between the stars, how much farther is what’s right here.' Rilke Late August evening, light pollution a pastel scum fronging the pre-Alps around Lugano. I watch stars spell themselves. The Big Dipper points its paw to Polaris. Under Cassiopeia, the tail end of the Perseid meteor show, the dusty trail of the Swift-Tuttle comet on its 34 year love loop of the sun. I see only the last sparks as small as grains of sand, spluttering kisses of the final flares. I’m not putting words in a god’s gaping mouth; no sprung mechanisms in mysterious workings. I only have, as Einstein said, a vague idea about that highest truth, the radiant beauty of the unsearchable and a sudden awareness at how fantastically miniscule my part is. A few sprinkled words. Hurry On Drifting the promenade of Desenzano Del Garda, admiring freshly fallen snow on the mountains that crown the pointed head of the Alpine lake. A building north wind promises in waves. Here is October tightening its chilling dress. We look down at the orange rock under our feet. Spun in the dark matter web of irregular lines a curling ammonite galaxy with ghostly white shell, a reminder of time flattened in plain sight. The shell spins and I hear the clocks ticking trillions of divisions, turning rock into sand, caterpillars into butterflies, the first hydrogen atoms into atomic bombs, my young parents into elderly people remembering their own parents this age, and me a once immortal boy now a middle-aged facsimile, puzzled at how quickly the sand runs. Now back on the promenade, marvelling at the fossil, pointing it out to friends who want to hurry on - aperitivo calling, snow falling, wine to be drunk, the absolute-zero of it all. The Trout I see you sliding over the muddy gold bed of the shallow river as it slips into Lake Lugano. You follow a flittering shoal of hope, gliding the thin layers between the different forms of air. I’m surprised by your size as you snuggle into the sheets of river and light. Lord of the muddier moments, king-sized in a peasant course, you draw me down the line of the green-grey water until merging with the unseen. Published in Borderless Journal, February 2022. After visiting Rilke’s grave in Raron,
I haunt a shaded path, companion to the Rhone and green-grey memory of minerals and ice, tiny waves tumbling with an urgency of a glacier unfolding, another freshly fallen artery blending too soon blue-grey. Rilke reassures me: everything is related through the spirit of the river, always welcoming listeners, urging them on, challenging stamina, fueling imagination. So too the trees, mountains, the flowing swifts in the air - all friends to mirror you on your journey, merging to become you, become me. Published in the Cooch Behar Anthology, India, February 2022. |
Poetry Biography:I have had over 70 poems published in the following worldwide magazines and literary journals: A Handful of Stones, Acta Victoriana (Canada), All the Sins (UK), The Amethyst Review (USA), Amsterdam Quarterly (NL) The Blue Nib (Ireland), Bolts of Silk, Borderless Journal, The Brasilia Review (Brazil), Bushfire Literature & Arts Review (US), Cadenza, Cake Magazine, Carillon, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal (Hong Kong), DASH (USA), Clackamas Literary Review (USA), Cooch Behar Anthology, Dawntreader, Dreamcatcher, The Dillydoun Review, Earth Love, The Ear (US), Eastlit (East Asia), Erbacce, Envoi, Finger Dance Festival, Ginosko, Gloom Cupboard, Hidden Channel, Inlandia Journal, IS&T (Ink, Sweat & Tears), Into the Void (Canada), The Journal, The Lakeview Journal (India), Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Lunch Ticket (USA) The New Writer, One Hand Clapping, Orbis, Oregon English Journal (USA), The Passage Between, Prole, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, Sonic Boom (India), Third Wednesday (USA), Of Nepalese Clay (Nepal), New Contrast (South Africa), One Hand Clapping, Opportunity Publishing, The Oregon English Journal (USA) Origami Poems Project (USA), The Paddock Review (USA), Panoplyzine (USA), Paper Swan Press, The Passage Between, The Peacock Journal (USA), Pens on Fire, Poetry Salzburg (Austria), Potomac Review, (USA) Prole, Pulsar Poetry, Rear View Poetry, Queen Mob's Teahouse, Qutub Minar Review (India), Red Ink, Shiela-Na-Gig (USA), South Bank Poetry Magazine, Stand, Waterford Teachers Centre, (Ireland) We Are a Website New Literary Journal (Singapore), Weber - The Contemporary West Review (USA), Windfall (USA), Writing Magazine, Words for the Wild and Verbal Art (India). Archives
March 2024
|