clear water : mattole poems
"I feel like a river
a wide river in the morning
birds and fish over and through me"
~Janine Pommy-Vega
a sink hole has opened up
where last winter David
buried his horse
--a form becoming void
creating a void
three gullies north
dark stones are pulling
the ocean back over themselves
we all need a rest
i should spend the whole day in the apple tree
20 limbs of leaf and sun and wind and fruit
can go a long way towards quieting the mind
picking off the too dense or misshapen apples
i want to touch every branch
the deer come right up to eat the forgone fruit
while i think of ways to respectfully
get them to fear me
most likely i should go deep into the mountains
where most things can be worked back into balance
for now, i'll drop apples on their heads
Bear Creek needs to flow
back through the alder grove
with a better culvert
instead of crossing the road
in that awful gravel wash
to do so would "disturb
an existing community"
says Fish and Wildlife
one thats at most 6 years old
by the same logic
there should be no planting of forests
over the landfills because
gulls and rats live on our plastic
war seethes and money follows it
salmon burn in the hot shallow waters
they follow old, old river songs home
swimming at the Ranch Hole
back eddy where the cold water
sinks and your toes stir it up
river bar stones hot
on my bare ass and grasshoppers
hit me in the head
i'd love to be here
when the river swells
or when the thousands
of juvenile fish gather
back at the cold seep
in the rocks of the wing-dam
but likely i will not be
there is youngness in me yet and
i am all too familiar with
the flighty high that the
first step in leaving brings
stay here for me, river
as if for one instant
you remain unchanged
i have nothing to do with you
i should say it to the mountains
but like me they are leaving too
we're all always leaving
i'll say it anyway
but take me out of this, river
stay here and the mountains you keep
river, stay here
jane's roses
the whole day spent
pulling grasses
from under Jane's roses
trace it to the stalk
then stem and tug
following me
through the fog
how beautiful
your roses each
a different shape
the mute light of
a day in a cloud
the color of the blood
they drew from me
all day pulling grasses
from their stony beds
on your hillside
by the river
at the sea
it is not that there is nothing
where we want a river flowing
it's just the water is muddy
as if some animal is crossing
back and forth in a confusion
like something could be learned
on the other side
and the footsteps stir the bottom
to the murky edges
its just that there is such thing as clear water
that every stone and pulp of leaf
and sunken branch and tiny fish
can be seen with an unusual clarity
and that the water magnifies whats in it
that it spreads the light out evenly
its that the water should be clear
even up against the dark and tangled banks
and where the tributaries cause cold riffles
its that the reaches can be swum
and all of it
clear water