Poetry

I.

Deer tracks on the muddy hill

above the school:

where have my students gone?

II.

Big leaf maple trees

like gold blown handprints

on the cave wall

of the forest floor.

III.

And then I thought again,

“Why have you come, Yellow Bird?”

IV.

My heart was in it the whole time,

when only the mist separated

the dark old Doug firs

from the fierce flame of

the dying aspen/alder/maple leaves.

V.

Some people say or minds were shaped

by the strange ways of the mushrooms,

that we began to talk

when we discovered ochre

and charcoal

and the steaky white

of diatomacious earth

VI.

When I die, my spirit

will come here and eat

long lichens off

old oaks, softened in the rain.

I will rise

and be fragmented by the needles

of sugar pine.

VII.

When I awake

in the half light pearl oyster

of the dawn,

I will go out an speak

to the totem pole my husband carved–it is then

the Giantess speaks.

VIII.

I see to be a spiral like the blue eye

of a moon shell

or the late unfurling frond

of a deer fern.

IX.

In the silences of the autumn woods

there are many voices–

the underground whispers of

the rhizomatic web.

I hear crows in each ear–their sharp

black eyes

are memorizing my face.

 

Nov. 4, 2010

At a bookmaking workshop