Marriage

I was going to write

How I walk across a cement bridge

Over lanes of northbound traffic in Seattle,

Eating cold spring rolls, headed for Elliot Bay Books

When I decided to shift focus, and drift instead

Over the icy rivers of Yukon territories.

 

Two summers ago

I untie laces and slip shoes onto the pebbly shore,

Draping socks spun from wool

Over the sun-bleached driftwood,

Toes disappearing through the watery lens.

 

It is here, in the north, where my soul warms like fire through snow,

Where I write best, and know

Love cannot be frozen or burned out of you, -

Even in cities, – where I no longer hear the heartbeat of mountains

Or bathe myself in the constant mouths of rivers.

 

I am not in Alaska long

When I flake halibut skin for smoking

With a knife in moonlight,

And split wood into strips

Laying the spruce tips flat

Against a black stove

For drying.

But these days,

There exist no ordinary mornings.

 

I’ve met my wife, and our cabinets are full of blue pottery,

My heart no longer

Reaching across patterns of waves

Folding and unfolding like translucent flowers.

 

I used to hike mountains and press my ear against their chests

Listening to musical rhythms and eating over tin plates.

Now I disregard aloneness for the Beloved,

Married somewhere between earth and heaven.

Strange to think

How thirty-three years

I wander corridors and fields,

The same blue clay forming beneath our feet in fire.

 

Sea of Mystery

Years ago I traveled through a sea of mystery,

Listening to voices in the midsummer’s golden light

Falling over my tent and cup of coffee.

And something stirred deep inside me,

An inclination, a memory

Of someone far away in the prairie

And mountains of earth.

Leaves folded over themselves, washing in the brook’s bubbling

Symmetry bookmarked by my heart.

I climbed ladders through the stars and saw consolations,

And smiled, and awoke.

Visions after waking up

1

Wednesday night,

Spruce Island, Alaska.

Early snow at the monastery’s bell, hands

Stiff from a cold evening in my blue sleeping bag.

2

Talking with one of the monks,

Drinking coffee over a campfire on the beach.

Talk of red salmon, rain storm on Friday, halibut soup.

3

Saw fox tracks near our cabbage and kale garden,

He might have gone after the vole, – - that’s the noise I heard last night.

Tomorrow we take the boat and head for Kodiak, maybe drift awhile

Looking for whales.

4

Chopped firewood for boiling creamy vegetable soup.

Tonight I’ll commune with God, not only hauling salmon

From silvery nets off the coast but listening to wind in the trees too.

Running into the Sea off Kodiak

I arrived with my canvas bag from India stuffed with old denim pants,

Green notebooks, a lucky toothbrush, and breathed

The fresh Alaskan air up into my lungs, illuminating my spirit

With spruce trees and the ocean’s white frothy roar.

 

One night after hiking the rainy forest, I hung

My jeans heavy with rain near a fireplace, running barefoot and alive

Around black slimy rocks and emerald seaweed

Beneath a sea of yellow and white constellations.

 

The waves galloped over driftwood and rock,

My friend leaping headlong into the rising prism of plum and charcoal,

His beard dark as an arrow against his chest.

Farther out, lights from the fishing boats.

I wasn’t thinking anything particular, only shapes

In my mind floating across a sea of language.

 

I splashed into the strange ocean, wandering through seahorses, whales

And a wedge of moonlight hovering

Over my shoulders.

But how quickly I headed back, to the familiar, to my cabin

Warm with oatmeal and coffee.

Near the old fireplace where my red socks hung to dry

My pants were on fire, tongues of yellow curling over the legs.

 

I swung them down, stamping them with wet salty feet.

Slept good that night.

Dreamed of angels.

Ancient River

I often wonder

What poem could be written for someone so special,

A woman in whose veins run this ancient river.

Is it really so hard to believe,

I ask myself, that she loves you? That for all faults and surprises, she sees

In your heart the same ancient river flowing? I might say yes.

I might say, we shall become one flesh,

Unseparated, a mystery within mysteries where all thorny yellow roses rise

Like dawn over our foreheads, synonymous

With the word ‘dream.’

Yes, I think

A poem might be written for every little resurrection,

Every new day

Glistening in ribbons of water over the windowpanes.

 

Chopping carrot, ginger and garlic

With my grandfather’s knife this afternoon,

Thinking of the swift

And swelling sea, my thoughts fed from rivers

In the woods,

I fork brown rice

Into my mouth and write this poem.

Standing over the cast iron skillet, I realize

There is another kind of fork,

A fork in a river, where leaves

Gold and copper

Sift among the slimy glittered backs

Of salmon, and folds between dark mountains.

 

Who is this woman, who will share with me this house?

I return to my cutting board. Orange carrots sizzle.

Who is this woman God brings me, deep, an ancient river

Coursing through veins

From which life awakens?

Snoqualmie Pass

The road fires through mountains like a white arrow,
Carving paths through the snowy spruce.

Through a maze of winding trees, the snow
Runs into icy rivers and below the road into a canyon
Whose name I don’t recall.

This morning I remember
A dream where cold air throws the checkered scarf
Across your forehead, and another

Where you’re putting on a coat,
One blue sleeve at a time,
Near the fireplace.

Where are you going?
Already in the tall green forest
You say,
Snoqualmie Pass.

I look at your eyes,
Impossible to know what you’re thinking.
I run down the hill after you,
Beneath plum and ivory clouds.

And now I am writing you a poem again,
Trails of footprints through the snow of language,
Far away

Winter here

 

Hiking a canyon one afternoon, I kneel in my waterproof boots

Onto a rock glittering in the Idaho river, lifting willow hooked on dirt

For my bow drill, a spindle carved from sage tucked into my leather belt.

It is cold, and time to begin fires over Shoshone.

Many windy nights, many crisp, frosted mornings white beneath the dawn

I watch eagles perched on brown canyon cliffs.

Nests of snow made from my boots

Set at night near my tent flaps.

Snow flickers clear against the canyon walls, melting shoelaces of water

Over my glasses.

Silence now in the spruce boughs,

An eagle mobbed by crows hides, ruffled and confused,

On a treetop.