Danger on Peaks (5 page)

A
NKLE-DEEP IN
A
SHES

Ankle-deep gray muddy ash         sticky after rain

walking wet burnt forest floor

(one-armed mechanic working on a trailer-mounted generator

a little barbecue by a parked trailer,

grilling steak after ten hours checking out the diesels)

— we're clumping through slippery ashes to a sugar pine

— a planner from a private timber company

a fire expert from the State, a woman County Supervisor

a former Forest Service line officer, the regional District Ranger,

a businessman-scientist who managed early retirement and does good

the superintendent of the county schools,

& the supervisor of one of the most productive public forests in the

pretty high back in the mountains

after a long hot summer wildfire and a week of rain.

Drove here through miles of standing dead trees

gazed across the mountain valley,

the sweep of black snags with no needles,

stands of snags with burnt needles dangling,

patches of green trees that still look live.

They say the duff layers glowed for weeks as the fire sank down.

This noble sugar pine we came to see is green

seven feet dbh, “diameter at breast height”

first limb a hundred feet above.

The District Ranger chips four little notches

round the trunkbase, just above the ashy dust:

cambium layer dry and brown

cooked by the slow duff burn.

He says, “Likely die in three more years

but we will let it stand.”

I circumambulate it and invoke, “Good luck — long life —

Sarvamangalam
— I hope you prove him wrong”

pacing charred twigs crisscrossed on the ground.

W
INTER
A
LMOND

Tree over and down

its root-rot clear to the air, dirt tilted

trunk limbs and twiglets crashed

on my mother's driveway — her car's barricaded

up by the house — she called last night

“I can't get out”

I left at dawn — freezing and clear,

a scatter of light snow from last week still

little Stihl arborist's chainsaw (a thrasher)

canvas knapsack of saw gear

and head for town         fishtailing ice slicks

She's in the yard in a mustard knit hat and a shawl cerise

from her prize heap of woolens

from the world's Goodwills

The tree's rotten limbs and whippy sprouts both

in a damn near dead old frame

my mother eighty-seven (still drives)

worries the danger,

the snarl of the saw chases her into the house

in the fresh clear air I move with the limbs and the trunk

crash in a sequence and piled as it goes, so,

firewood rounds
here,
and the brushpile
there.

rake down the drive for the car — in three hours.

Inside where it's all too hot

drink chocolate and eat black bread with smoked oysters,

Lois goes over her memory of my jobs as a youth

that made me do this sort of work

when I'm really “So intellectual. But you always worked hard as a kid.”

She tells me a story: herself, seventeen, part-time clerk in a store

in Seattle, the boss called her in for a scolding.

“how come you shopped there?” — a competitor's place.

— her sister worked there (my Aunt Helen)

who could get her a discount as good

as what they had here.

The boss said “o.k. That's o.k. then,” and Lois said “also

it's time for a raise.” I asked did you get it?

So many hours at this chair

hearing tales of the years.

“I was skinny. So thin.”

With her great weight now.

“Thank you son for the tree.

You did it quick too.

The neighbors will say

He came right away.”

Well I needed a change.

A few rounds of sound almond wood —

maybe my craft friend Holly will want them

you won't be just firewood — a bowl or a salad fork

old down

almond tree

M
ARIANO
V
ALLEJO
'
S
L
IBRARY

Mariano Vallejo's library

was the best in the Eastern Pacific

he was reading Rousseau, Voltaire

(some bought from the ship
Leonor
)

The Yankees arrived and he welcomed them

though they drove off his horses and cattle

then one year the Casa, books and all, burned to the ground.

The old adobe east of the Petaluma River still stands.

Silvery sheds in the pastures once were chicken-coops

the new box mansions march up the slope.

At my sister's
Empty Shell
book party some retired

chicken growers walked in cuddling favorite birds.

Vallejo taught vine-growing tricks to Charles Krug

and Agostin Haraszthy — the vineyards are everywhere

but the anarchist egg growers gone.

The bed of the Bay all shallowed by mining

pre–ice age Sierra dry riverbeds

upturned for gold and the stream gravel washed off by hoses

swept to the valley in floods.

Farmers lost patience, the miners are now gone too.

New people live in the foothills.

pine-pitch and dust, poison oak.

The barnyard fence shades jimson weed,

datura, toloache,
white trumpet flower, dark leaf.

The old ones from the world before taught care:

whoever's here, whatever language —

race, or century, be aware

that plant can scour your mind,

put all your books behind.

W
AITING FOR A
R
IDE

for Gary Holthaus

Standing at the baggage passing time:

Austin Texas airport — my ride hasn't come yet.

My former wife is making websites from her home,

one son's seldom seen,

the other one and his wife have a boy and girl of their own.

My wife and stepdaughter are spending weekdays in town

so she can get to high school.

My mother ninety-six still lives alone and she's in town too,

always gets her sanity back just barely in time.

My former former wife has become a unique poet;

most of my work,

such as it is                  is done.

Full moon was October second this year,

I ate a mooncake, slept out on the deck

white light beaming through the black boughs of the pine

owl hoots and rattling antlers,

Castor and Pollux rising strong

— it's good to know that the Pole Star drifts!

that even our present night sky slips away,

not that I'll see it.

Or maybe I will, much later,

some far time walking the spirit path in the sky,

“that long walk of spirits — where you fall right back into the

narrow painful passageway of the Bardo”

squeeze your little skull

and there you are again

waiting for your ride

IV

Steady, They Say

D
OCTOR
C
OYOTE
W
HEN
H
E
H
AD A
P
ROBLEM

Doctor Coyote when he had a problem

took a dump. On the grass, asked his turds where they lay

what to do? They gave him good advice.

He'd say “that's just what I thought too”

And do it.         And go his way.

C
LAWS
/ C
AUSE

for Zenshin

“Graph” is the claw-curve, carve —

paw track, lizard-slither, tumble of

a single boulder down. Glacier scrapes across the bedrock,

Saying, “this was me”

language is        breath, claw, or tongue

“tongue” with all its flickers

might be a word for

hot love, and               fate.

A single kiss               a tiny cause [claws]

— such grand effects [text].

H
OW
M
ANY
?

Australia, a group of girls at a corroboree

Lapland, reindeer herdgirls

China, the “yaktail”

Greece, the seven daughters, sisters,

or “the sailing stars”

a cluster of faint stars in Taurus,

the Pleiades,

name of a car in Japan —

“Subaru”

in Mayan — A fistful of boys —

L
OADS ON THE
R
OAD

Stu's stubby heavy tough old yellow dump truck

parked by his place          “For Sale”

he's fine, but times and people change.

Those loads of river-run and crushed blue mine rock

in our roadbed           Stu and me

standing talking            engine idling

those days gone now,

days to come.

C
ARWASH
T
IME

Looking at a gray-pine,

chunky fire-adapted cones

bunched toward the top,

a big tree there behind the tire shop

— I'm sitting on a low fence

while a wild gang does a benefit

wash-job on my daughter's car.

Tattooed and goateed white dudes,

brown and black guys,

I say “What you raising money for?”

— “The drug and alcohol halfway

house up the street”

old Ridge sedan

never been this neat

T
O
A
LL THE
G
IRLS
W
HOSE
E
ARS
I P
IERCED
B
ACK
T
HEN

for Maggie Brown Koller

(among others)

Sometimes we remember that moment:

you stood there attentive with clothespins

dangling, setting a bloodless dimple in each lobe

as I searched for a cork & the right-sized needle

& followed the quick pierce with a small gold hoop.

The only guy with an earring

back then

It didn't hurt that much

a sweetly earnest child

and a crazy country guy

with an earring and a

gray-green cast eye

and even then,

this poem.

S
HE
K
NEW
A
LL
A
BOUT
A
RT

She knew all about art — she was fragrant, soft,

I rode to her fine stone apartment, hid the bike in the hedge.

— We met at an opening, her lover was brilliant and rich,

first we would talk, then drift into long gentle love.

We always made love in the dark. Thirty years older than me.

C
OFFEE
, M
ARKETS
, B
LOSSOMS

My Japanese mother-in-law

born in America

tough with brokers

a smart trader

grew up working barefoot

in the Delta, on the farm.

Doesn't like Japan.

Sits in the early morning

by the window, coffee in hand,

gazing at cherry blossoms.

Jean Koda

needing no poem.

I
N THE
S
ANTA
C
LARITA
V
ALLEY

Like skinny wildweed flowers sticking up

hexagonal “Denny's” sign

starry “Carl's”

loopy “McDonald's”

eight-petaled yellow “Shell”

blue-and-white “Mobil” with a big red “O”

growing in the asphalt riparian zone

by the soft roar of the flow

A
LMOST
O
KAY
N
OW

She had been in an accident: almost okay now,

but inside still recovering,

bones slow-healing — she was anxious

still fearful of cars and of men.

As I sped up the winding hill road

she shuddered — eyes beseeching me —

I slowed the car down.

Out on a high meadow under the moon,

With delicate guidance she showed me

how to make love without hurting her

and then napped awhile in my arms,

smell of sweet grass

warm night breeze

S
US

Two pigs in a pickup sailing down the freeway

stomping with the sway,

Big pink ears up          looking all around,

taut broad shoulders           trim little legs,

bright and lively with their parsnip-colored skin

wind-washed earth-diggers

they're not pork, they are forever
Sus: