Board the ferry in Seattle, cross the water
between glass and steel, loading docks big cranes
early morning darkness hum of engine churned waves –
moon to port in thin layers of flitting night cloud.
Roll off slow, uphill curve to the Hood Canal bridge
steel spine gray in pixelated light over dark water.
Hot coffee smell weaving through evergreen forests
on up to Sequim, dry in the shadow of Olympic peaks.

Leaving Port Angeles is leaving the known world.
America fades into the rear view mirror
as dawn rises slowly over the Cascade rim
light flowing soft on the Strait and foothills
a cleansing pour of shine filtered through a green haze
as the road courses past rocky beaches, dark groves.
Morning settles in along Highway 101
driving in trickling shadows up to Crescent lake.

Moving in the realm of the Salish sea
rising and falling in tidal movement
shaping the coves and borders of the land.
Mists and lifting fog shift in a whirling pavane
in the cool and drip of summers morning
along the pathway of the westering Sol Duc
before crossing the Calawah entering Forks –
chatter of the Thriftway and a fresh cup to go.

In southerly drift along the continents ragged edge –
the Bogachiel bridge curves in graceful arc
through a valley in the gaze of snow covered heights.
Broken land along the way, timber land
timbered tracts of slash heaps and forlorn stumps
to the tops of the once green sylvan hills
scattered through the scarred river plains
washed in snow melt and falling rain through all the hills.

America’s lost corner – of Makah, Quinault –
north by northwest, where the dream ends
in washed coves, lone beach head promontories
open to the sea beyond the reach of forests
deep in dark fir and fern entanglement
home of Sasquatch, big foot, rumored, unseen
pillaging the thoughts of dwellers in primal space
dripping under eves of moss laden leaky roofs.

Out of nowhere an eastward turn, metanoia,
as a pale sun brushes the shifting cloud cover
branch shadowing the road up the river valley
tracing its course under an arching evergreen
losing time by the minutes and the hours
moving senses slowly towards consciousness
of space in primeval and verdant infancy
efflorescent, fresh, bathed in effulgence.

This last road leads in a slow meander
up into the coastal rainforest of the Hoh –
rare earth in a fragile and disquieted land
where silence lives and in the night, darkness.
In evening camp I sit by the rush of river
sipping whiskey beneath fir and hemlock,
old before I was born or my fathers
before my mothers lived, conceived and bore.

I’ll hike the river trail in the morning
surrounded by soft beds of thick moss, green
if green is green of a thousand different shades
up in the trees, moss to the high branches
vying with ferns for space, feelers probing
forming intricacies of water, light, shadow –
patterns of life in deep, terra, mute abundance –
another spore, nurse log, fungus, another time.

Rain drizzle sifts through a dense canopy
hovering over rivulets floating
clear across sand and pebble speckled beds,
fallen surface leaves held and spun.
Black bear and antlered elk roam in these woods
foraging unseen around each turn of the trail.
Bear bell jingling, walking sticks on the path
I wander for miles in sensual bliss.

Portland, Oregon – April 1, 2017

Photo is my own – the base of a Bigleaf maple beside the Hoh river trail. One of the photos I use as a rotating  site header is also of the Hoh river and valley during a light rain.