RAVEN'S WITNESS ~

 

Nothing like an authorized biography

which should come in good time

and more gleanings selected by a

Lentfer, a close friend with Nelson,

from the anthropologist and explorer's

private journals, well trail-

blazed and revealing.

Go read Richard K. Nelson's

 The Island Within.

Mountaineers Books

2020

JOHN HAINES (1958-1960) ~

 

Two Poems After Li Po

I — Conversation

If you ask me why

I live here on

this lonely hillside

I will smile and say:

The autumn leaves

drift on the moving

water, and

the world of men

is far away.

II — Quiet Night

Moonlight spills

across the bed,

outside the frost

is deepening.

I lie awake and

watch the changing

shadows, thinking

of the lonely earth.

A Letter

                  after Li Chang-yin

I will not ask you

what we know too well,

the heart has

its own intelligence.

I lower the flame in the lamp

by the snowbound window

and let the moonlight in.

Two thousand miles away

you have said goodbye,

and there is no returning.

After Chu Yuan

With you

I will go down

to the river

and bathe in a quiet pool.

I will dry your hair

in the sun

singing a little,

facing the quiet wind.

With you

I will climb the slope

of evening,

warmed and content,

thinking of home.

________________

John Haines

Of Your Passage, O Summer

Limberlost Press, 2004

REMEMBERING RICHARD NELSON ~

 

R I C H A R D     N E L S O N

TOM SEXTON ~

At Fort Egbert

    Eagle, Alaska




In a field where weary soldiers once stood

breathing cold river mist at reveille,

I watched a woman and child filling

a large pail with strawberries as small

as the tip of the child's little finger.

She said they were brought to Eagle

over coastal mountains from Valdez

by a cavalry officer's young wife

who wrapped them in wet straw and burlap

when her steamer saild for Seattle.

She had found them deep in the woods

in ruts once cut by wagon wheels.

This story was told her by a woman

whose grandfather was stationed here.

The evening air was cooling as she spoke

with an accent slightly soft and Southern.

I knew the strawberries were wild.

A few were growing in my garden,

and I had seen them near the cemetery, as well.

Still I listened without saying a word.

Her story would comfort them when December's

gruel of thin light shivered in her daughter's spoon.





____________________
Tom Sexton
World Brimming Over
Brooding Heron Press
2003

JOHN HAINES ~

JOSEPH A. ENZWEILER ~

JOSEPH    A.    ENZWEILER

The Doorway

There is the moment of the day

in early June, when yellow light

falls on the equisetum and the ground

breaks out so luminous, so green,

could winter ever fall atop

such beauty and lie so foreign,

so deep? I watch from my doorway

how the light moves off,grows pale

finally, the way a face falls

out of memory. Behind me,

through the door are all the things

I have, part of the world grown

used to me. And beyond at the twilight

woods, what will gather me

tomorrow. But now I let go

in the gentle, given night, unearned,

and settle in the door

(while the unmoving part of me

still turns to you to speak love

always). But soon we must be still.

For a rain begins to fall, so fine

that the woods fill up

with silver light

but make no sound.

——————————

Joseph A. Enzweiler