All the years I waited through winter for summer, it's warm and calm breezes, sinking toes into beach sand, lying in green grass under slow clouds drifting as if going nowhere, nowhere. Playing catch with my cousin, bikes out all along the Monument Road to where, in winter, ski slopes rose above Silver Creek, and in summer all green wood and forgotten meadows. We did not know what would come of summer when we also silver were, that it would not be what it always was that healing season after the winter storms. Now I wish for autumn leaves, the coming of rain and cold - healing after burned leaves, drowned fields, the empty air where once swirled myriad butterflies, birds and bees. Where the species once abundant swarming in all the fields, forests, and farms? I will take a breath in autumn, a deep breath as calm, as balm watching the rain fall hearing it on the roof, pooling in the ruts. Here is the cool wind from the west that brings an end to summer and to what summer has become. _________________________________________________________________ Portland, Oregon - September 29, 2021 I write from the Pacific Northwest of America. While other places in America and the world experienced devastating rains and flooding, we experienced devastating heat and drought. I support the fullest of the Green New Deal to begin to take seriously the effects of human caused climate change.
Pacific Northwest
Orange
Orange. Sun set color tinged - smoke of fires. Another hot day. Our rain, our cool are for another someone far away. They grieve for the rain we for the drought. We both are without. Let it be. Together we grasp the meaning of the orange and the gray. _____________________________________________________________________________ Portland, Oregon - August 14, 2021
En Plein Air
At the end of day, the sun sets and the wind blows. Out in the yard I see the trees I planted and the perennials - red columbine, elderberry, flowering currant. Four years now grows the Pacific Madrone glory of the pacific northwest, beautiful native gangly in youth and lost, like an eleven year old boy. As for the flora, so the fauna of the land - squirrels, racoons, brush rabbits eating grass. The crow caws, black-capped chickadees songs. Spiders spinning, bees buzzing, bugs galore gorging. We live our lives, all who live, on the earth and stone. Between and around us all, infused within all flow the airs of summer - scented, sensual, seasoned by flower fragrance, dried grass browned and blown. Pine needles drop, drooping leaves and stems abound in the drought year, no rain for months now. Of all that I might wish to see of what the world has to give what I see here is enough for me, a cornucopia of excess living in the plain light of day, doing business with the air taking nourishment from the earth, pollinating, procreating pouring over the pristine nectar of the flowers of the field. It is enough for me. For healing, nourishment, abundant life it is enough, enough, and more than ever enough. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Portland, Oregon - August 5, 2021 "En plein air, a French phrase meaning "in the open air," describes the process of painting a landscape outdoors, though the phrase has also been applied to the resulting works. The term defines both a simple technical approach and a whole artistic credo: of truth to sensory reality, a refusal to mythologize or fictionalize landscape, and a commitment to the idea of the artist as creative laborer rather than exulted master."(https://www.theartstory.org/definition/en-plein-air/)
Heatwave
All is still. The quiet gathering
of heat, searching in waves
for every corner and shadow.
We stop our lives and wait –
motor, pounding, playing
sounds missing from the day.
Here the dragon moves.
We long for it to pass us by
sitting in our dark and silent spaces.
Calm pervades. A great long breath
pours over our land and our thoughts
in slow and silent exhalation.
__________________________________________________________________
Portland, Oregon – June 28, 2021
Today it will get up to about 115 degrees in Portland.
Caretaker
It is not mine, this bit of lovely land
where I have a home, some sitting chairs
a place to cook a meal, sleep at night.
No. Not mine. None of it.
Not the warm room, the living garden,
or even family and friends
who walk with me these broken paths –
who love, long, and linger here
where once only the land lived alone
under the solitude of the roving heavens.
Snow came today, wet and winded wild
covering in slush, cold, and broken sunlight
these sacred paths that know my steps,
have heard my voice and felt my hand.
My enchanted and mesmerizing world
catches each cold borne snow drop
falling from a drear and darkening sky
as if winter blooming flowers dissolving
on window panes, lanes and pathways,
glistening on shriveled autumn brown leaves.
A caretaker am I with nothing to call my own
but to call it home and roam from place to place
on this bit of earth, this plenteous portion
where fertile land meets the porous sky,
as western red cedars dig fragrant and deep.
Here below, squirrels furl tail squeal and, above,
a squalling murder of black crows circle.
It is not mine to have, all of it, as it is.
I live on this land, love and linger over it
yet I myself belong to another, maybe
the heavens themselves, the sun and stars
who cared for this place long before I came to be
have always seen it as their own and will fawn
over their jewel, set in space, blue and white –
the bright stone of earth set in the starry crown.
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Portland, Oregon – January 27, 2021
Life on the 45th Parallel
I live here – kicking along the 45th parallel
between tropic tangle and arctic ice.
A warm hard rain pour in January
greets me in the saturated morning
while I watch from in between, getting wet.
This winter drizzle, chill damp nights,
belong to the realm of burgeoning –
frizzled messes of underground roots
plunging chaotic where they cannot be seen
entwining with others of their kind
where leaves and flowers are born
in the dark cold wet wormy wild ground!
I should go inside where it is warm
with electric gadgets to keep it all safe.
But where then the dark dreamy winter
in these temperate climes and soggy bogs?
Out here, creatures are beginning to stir –
bugs in every downed log, caught
in the tangle of brush by the back fence,
within the rock pile gathering emerald green moss.
All the wonder of life being born and I…
I am pushing out waves of steamy breath
somewhere along the length of parallel 45
under forgiving stars on this winter night.
________________________________________________________________________
Portland, Oregon – 45° 34′ 18.44″ N – January 14, 2021
The Closing Door
Fairy door on oak – November 29, 2016
Fairy door on oak – February 11, 2020
One day the fairies will close their doors
lock the locks and retreat to the places
where, though we may seek them,
we’ll not be able to find them.
The welcome offered by the green
glorious world may be withdrawn;
the joyful play of creation in the garden
of time – the cosmos in slants of sunlight
on the floors, shadows in corners, swaying
branch movements in the pale air – may
no longer find a place in human words.
Still there is time, the precious gift
given, offered to peoples who alone
count the minutes, stash them away
into the past, wondering, fearful,
how many more may yet be theirs.
Portland, Oregon – February 18, 2020
This is our front yard oak tree, damaged by a hit and run driver. The injury is giving way to the healing work of a great tree. I like to think that the artwork of our granddaughter, Audrey, acted as a bandage to assist in the healing process. Then, all the children in the three years since who have stopped to play by that door.
Day’s End
Each day is an end –
a sun’s set or moon’s fall
over the horizon’s hidden edge.
It was always that way,
always that way.
We will go over our own horizon
one day, our dazzling sun
aflame in the tapestry of heaven –
that twinkling star far away
from someone watching out there.
This day’s end will be a winter sun
setting over the windy Oregon coast –
ocean gobbling up the flames,
rain cooling the waters.
The moon will wander
between clouds and the night
to mark the end of another day.
Portland, Oregon – January 1, 2020
Weather and Climate Change
The weather changed today.
In the morning a marine layer, crisp,
lowered over the Pacific northwest –
gray and calm, cool as a silent prayer.
In the afternoon the sun drifted
overhead through wispy clouds;
warmth spread over our splendid fields
as spring became summer.
As a young boy a day such as this
was all I knew of weather.
As for climate, as with all science,
I was blissfully unaware
content to wish upon stars.
I’ve only wanted daily weather –
seasonal changes from warm to cold,
rain to wind to snow.
It was enough for me to know
that climate changes because
the axial tilt of the earth,
at 23.5 degrees, makes it so,
while the orbiting moon flails
endlessly at the foaming seas.
How little I knew of weather,
of climate and their ways.
The blame is mine.
As a boy I lay in the summer grass
watching the clouds drift by.
It was all I ever wanted to know
of weather, climate change
and the passing of our limited time.
Portland, Oregon – Summer solstice, June 21, 2019.
Seeing through Fog
Pacific northwest winter mornings
shrouded in fog – cold, dense, dripping
from evergreen branches, fir and cedar,
sifting through blurred spaces and still swirls.
I see what is out there in the reaches
beyond the gray shadows laying
silent in the movement of days gone
away, lost in memory, shaken
awakened from the depths of slumber.
As a child I lay in bed
listening for the sound of trains
passing in the night; in the darkness
to the deep and resonant sound
from across the bay, of a foghorn
wakening the night, putting me to sleep
as if it were my own mother
coming to calm the terrors of my night.
Portland, Oregon – February 19, 2019
In Cascadia 