PRIMO LEVI







ALMANAC


The indifferent rivers
Will keep on flowing to the sea
Or ruinously overflowing dikes,
Ancient handiwork of determined men.
The glaciers will continue to grate,
Smoothing what lies beneath them.
Or suddenly fall headlong,
Cutting short fir trees' lives.
The sea, captive between
Two continents, will go on struggling,
Always miserly with its riches.
Sun, stars, planets and comets
Will continue on their course.
Earth too will fear the immutable
Laws of the universe.
Not us. We, rebellious offspring
With great brainpower, little sense,
Will destroy, defile,
Always more feverishly.
Very soon we will extend the desert
Into the Amazon forests,
Into the living heart of our cities,
Into our very hearts.


2 January 1987

translated by Ruth Feldman

Born in Turin Italy and dying there only a few months after writing the poem above, Primo Levi's poetry is probably less known than all of his other writings rich as memoirs, fiction and non-fiction. His slender Collected Poems roughly begins from his Auschwitz captivity, where Elie Wiesel commented at the time of Levi's death (disputed suicide) in 1987 , that "Primo Levi died at Auschwitz forty years earlier." Nonetheless, Levi's poetry speaks for endless time.

[& unable to help myself, here is another from a year earlier]



PROXY


Don't be afraid if the work is hard:
You who are less tired are needed.
Since your senses are fine-tuned, you hear
The hollow sound under your feet.
Consider our mistakes again:
We have also had among us
Someone who set about searching blindly
The way a blindfolded man repeats an outline,
Someone who set sail like the pirates,
And someone who tried his very best.
Help, insecure one. Try, though you're insecure,
Because you're insecure. See
If you can repress the annoyance and disgust
Of our doubts and certainties.
Never have we been so rich and yet
We live in the midst of embalmed monsters,
Other monsters obscenely alive.
Don't be dismayed by the rubble,
Or the stench of refuse dumps: we
Cleared them up with our bare hands
In the years when we were your age.
Continue the race, as best you can. We have
Combed the comets' mane,
Deciphered the secrets of origins,
Trampled the moon's sand,
Built Auschwitz and destroyed Hiroshima.
See: we have not remained inactive.
Take up the cause, perplexed one;
Don't call us teachers.



24 June 1986

FARE THEE WELL MIKE SEEGER
AUGUST 15, 1933 ~ 7 AUGUST 2009

WHEN ONE BIRD SANG TO ANOTHER

JAMES KOLLER & BOB ARNOLD READ TO ONE ANOTHER

(AND SOME OTHERS) IN VERMONT

BOB ARNOLD









DAY AND NIGHT



How often have we
Stepped together into water —
You left your clothes on the rocks
And shivered your way to me,
Said it was freezing as I thought
Of the mountain stream filling this
Clear basin of evening light, and how
Swallows showed us the angles of the sky
Far above barbed wire and pasture heat
Which we came down from after work
Smelling lilac in the breeze —
And it was the long blonde hair you shook
Out of a blue bandana and later braided
That had me remember the day and night.




from Where Rivers Meet (Mad River Press) noted in its image to the right

REMEMBERING CLARENCE SCHMIDT











It is the hour — any hour is — to remember Clarence Schmidt, the grass roots Woodstock, NY artist and his reign of building House and Gardens over a twenty year period (1952-1972). Ohayo Mountain to be exact is where Schmidt built and held fort with stupendous natural glee, creating roof top gardens, countless symbols and totems, and two sculpture structures — one reaching 7 storeys, and both lost to fire. One man's attempt at creating and interior/exterior living experiment mainly from used materials, found objects, castoffs, architectural mayhem, craftsmanship and deep wonder.

The above photograph "Doll Foot Shrine" is by Gregg Blasdel, thank goodness documented while Schmidt's structure was still afloat. One of myriad objects created and planted, holding its own aura over the region.

COMING TO KNOW GARY SNYDER






The man will be eighty years next year and to witness the two visual feasts below will be a reminder of what is within our midst. Good direct talk on bio-regionalism, sustainability in the U.S. and abroad, livelihood, family/tribe, forest/fire management, Earth household and poetry. Both presentations come from Snyder's rich past & present habitats — whether at home in the Sierra Nevada, or as a one time resident and student at Berkeley. Listen to the stories.

SABINE MILLER







from bee dance



moth, do eat a few

holes in this sweater

for the spring moon



~



fireflies

dreaming

of

fireflies

dreaming

of

fireflies



~



out-breath

-------grasshopper

-------------jumps



~



grief. . .

-------a spider thread breaks

-------in the wind

I believe Sabine Miller once called us and spoke with Susan. It seems like awhile ago. She sent to me a packet once and had drawn on the outside envelope a bird in flight I carefully cut-out and saved, now pinned near one of the desks where I work. The bird has never stopped showing me movement, freely. A quiet and hidden away poet, like so many of the best are. Seek out those seekers. bee dance is a lovely foldout booklet issued in 2004 from Tribe Press. You can find a copy at Longhouse if you wish.

RYOKAN
(1758-1831)







I'm truly simple
living among trees and grasses.
Don't ask me about illusion or enlightenment.
I'm just an old man who smiles to himself.
I ford streams with these thin legs,
and carry my bag in fine weather.
Such is my life,
but the world owes me nothing.



translated by Dennis Maloney

a contemporary of William Blake and Henry David Thoreau, playmate with children, calligrapher and hermit, here is one of the finest from Ryokan and one of the finest one will ever find of the playful and dead serious discipline. It's all in the thin legs and nothing. From Longhouse we can offer you Ryokan until the cows come home — plus Dennis Maloney's even blend translations, of which the above is one, may be had from the recently released Between the Floating Mist (White Pine, wwwwhitepine.org)

MARCIA ROBERTS






from Autumn’s Slant


hey, vaquero, you got boots
my daddy never got me none
said he bought a pair once wouldn’t do it again
gave me a dollar let me drive the car


when the oil pan breaks on a rock, the father walks home at dusk
a good time for mosquitoes, fireflies, and crickets
kids lie on the lawn, picking at clover, listening
to stories how he shot coyotes from the saddle
and how a mad bull attacked him on horseback


~


longhorns derive from barrenda, the spotted ones
retinto, the reds, and ganado prieto, the fighters

stepping into la corrida

it’s me or you, sucka, let the snot roll off your snout
the blood run off your back onto the sand

los caballeros come from la Mancha y Extremadura
singing God, Glory, Gold, and making marks on cattle’s flanks


~


when the father is old one leg gone
he drives off in a cloud, checking on – S –
vaqueros siempre…..desde el comienzo no somos caballeros…..somos paisanos

moving herds north…..spreading mesquite
along the Chisholm…..all the way to Abilene


~


he didn’t wear a bandana or furry chaps
eat mountain oysters or lasso strays

don’t kid yourself, vaquero, my old man was a cowboy
chewing on a long stem of wheat grass

Lazarillo’s hidalgo picks his teeth on an empty stomach
Hernán Cortéz isn’t the caballero we think

the great warrior lies in Burgos
above the Missouri, the father resides

in sage brush, vaqueros wear tapaderos
and Lakota nod hasta luego

en este lugar . . .
there is no good-bye


~


We live where Muwekma Ohlone lived and danced. Elderberry flutes, bird bone
whistles, split stick clappers kept the beat until men from Sonora rode in.

You can see the end of the rainbow. Dark storm clouds push colors down to the
water, making one final glow.


~


at Farragut North the saxophone man plays Amazing Grace
others huddle on grates around the Corcoran

when the archives guard says there can be no spitting
Peg whispers, we’ll spit in our pockets


~


hollyhocks grow on the south side of gray stucco
mother and daughter cut blooms for a glass basket
and gather oatmeal-shaped seeds
planting them again and again


~


the beauty of the daughter overwhelms her
she wants the child to be her art, herself


~


when the mother dies, the daughter is 54
she looks and feels twelve


~


in a dream she tries to plant grass and flowers
on the east side of gray stucco
her mother tells her
grass never grew here and it never will


~


I cannot cross your name from my book
instead, I buy denim with embroidery and beads

come dine tonight with two lemons
I can make pie or cake
we’ll have wine and salad lasagna perhaps
or curry and rice expresso and Duque de Rivas
our speech syncopated
you remember one thing I remember another

and in the final morning dream
we’ll use the first words when the last words begin

Marcia Roberts is a native of South Dakota. Her books of poetry include Open Eye (Skanky Possum Press) and two fine new books from Effing Press: In the Bird's Breath and Autumn's Slant (effingpress.com). The above first appeared in Longhouse-Origin (sixth series). Marcia makes a home with her husband Len in San Antonio, Texas.

ALBERT SAIJO






LET US INVENT OUR NOBLE SAVAGE SO WE KNOW
ONE WHEN WE SEE ONE — LET US IMAGINE ANEW
THE PERFECTION AT THE BEGINNING OF THINGS
— NOBLE SAVAGE INNOCENT OF DEATH — NOBLE
SAVAGE UNDERSTANDS THE LANGUAGE OF THE
OTHER ANIMALS & TALKS TO THEM & LIVES IN
DEEP PEACE WITH THEM — NOBLE SAVAGE NO
NEED WORK — WITHOUT LABOR NOBLE SAVAGE
FEEDS AT ABUNDANT TREE OF LIFE — NOBLE
SAVAGE EATS AND IS EATEN IN DEEP PEACE —
NOBLE SAVAGE TALKS TO GOD — NOBLE SAVAGE
TRAVELS TO GOD NOT JUST IN SPIRIT BUT
CARNATE AND WHOLE — THEY TALK AT GOD’S
OASIS BENEATH THE IDEAL PALM — THEY TALK
IN THE LANGUAGE OF THE ANIMALS BARKING
AND TWITTERING — NOBLE SAVAGE NEVER FALL

ALBERT SAIJO is "George Baso" in Jack Kerouac's Big Sur. A native of Los Angeles, Saijo penned the classics The Backpacker, Trip Trap (with Kerouac and Lew Welch) and Outspeaks, a Rhapsody.

PAUL CELAN








Ash-Aura back of
your shock-knotted
hands at the three-corners.

Black Sea old times: here,
one drop,
on
the drowned oar blade,
deep
in the fossilized oath,
surf murmurs.

(up the precipitous
breath rope, in those days,
higher than high,
between two knots of pain—while
the brilliant
Tartar moon rose up to us,
I sunk and I sunk into you.)

Ash
aura back of
you three-corners
hands.

Come from the east, the way in front of you
a crap-shoot, terrifying.

No one
bears witness for
the witness.

BOB ARNOLD









ECO


I chopped down the tree I planted

Cut up and burned as fuel

Carried out its ash to spread

WALTER FRANCESCHI










THE GARDENERS' GANG



They have their base in an old garage in ruins

at the end of a short gravel driveway

hidden behind a big green iron gate

and I run across them almost every morning

a few minutes to eight

as they get ready for another working day

bringing ladders, chain saws and any kind of tool

that they might need during the day

from the garage to the street where their trucks are parked

over breezy chats

five or six guys in boots

all young, around my age

and all confident-looking

and as I walk by I wonder how it might be if one of these days

instead of continuing my walk toward the office

I stopped by and joined the gang

Walter Franceschi is the author of Little Satori from Longhouse, see image of booklet below. From his home in Molino del Piano (a small town 15km from Florence) he has been writing to me of the goings-on in his neighborhood, and sometimes about these workers. I suggested he write a poem or two, and he's good for that and maybe even more. His poems often celebrate the very things we may overlook and may even miss entirely. There is great value in that.

IRA COHEN










GOD’S MIRROR


Dreaming about the mirror,

I think of God’s affliction,

about the necessity of freeing Him from the mirror

without breaking it,

His presence so subtle

you cannot see it there.

Several days I have

awakened with this on my mind,

not sure of

the nature of my concern,

yet sure of its importance,

the answer must lie in

the way a mirror is made.

this poem is hidden away with more in this new Longhouse publication for 2009. Ira Cohen is known in the most mystical corners of the globe, even on the stars. His poetry, prose, art work and living has earned him a reputation and friendships everywhere.

READERS PARADISE

These are just a few of the books / music on the nightstand or packing with us on road trips. Some are old timers brought out from the golden shelves, others are brand new for Spring 09. All should be bought used or new and preferably from independent booksellers, or from your local library, or read free that rainy day in Barnes & Noble. Take charge, reader! Kindle is for sissies! A real book in hand or pocket or satchel is man's best friend. Stroke a book.




Rae Armantrout
Versed
(Wesleyan)









Equals

As if, after all,

the thing that comes to mind
squared
times inertia

equaled the "real".

2.

One lizard
jammes headfirst

down the throat
of a second.

Clayton Eshleman

The Grindstone of Rapport
selected poetry, prose & translations
(Black Widow Press, www.blackwidowpress.com)

I'm most fond of early Eshleman poems — long before the clap-trap of alchemy and self-analysis inflicted his poems, these are best left for prose ruminations where he is far superior. There is a brotherhood in all of this book that comes through with a power and a force to reckon with. An involved artist of many talents, Eshleman ranges well and often fearlessly — from editing original matter like Caterpillar and Sulfur publications, into literary and philosophical essays and inquiries, pushed with a passion for all-lands poetry and translations where an alchemy of sorts is finely tuned. This is a book to own and fuss with and pass along.






Alec Wilkinson
The Protest Singer
(Knopf)

In Washington DC there are many monuments and portraits in oils hung on display and millions have walked before them — a showcase of leadership and goodwill, and in some cases thieves and downright murderers in sheeps clothing. One day America the beautiful may wake up and show a portrait for all to see of Pete Seeger, an American lad who crossed all the world singing songs of freedom and civil rights. Easy songs. Songs as lullabies and things to whistle to. And he had the greatness to sing the songs of many others and believe in those even more than his own. A great great caring soul. Alive at 90 years of age just like the gods planned it for us.






Robert M. Thorson
Beyond Walden
(Walker)

Things about kettle lakes, glacier deposits and emerald water (as seen at Walden Pond) are some of the subject matter here — but it's only a jumping off point for this fine geologist's mind to mull over civilization and how one evolves and perhaps withstands and hopefully provides. Water doesn't just run through one's fingers here.





Gideon S. Golany
Chinese Earth-Sheltered Dwellings
(University of Hawaii)


I first took notice of earth dwellings in China where those were burrowed in and making habitats in the Great Wall. Yaodong (below-ground habitats) have been used continuously in China for the last four centuries and today house more than forty million Chinese. This book's detailed survey of the culture and adaptation by the inhabitants is one for the ages. Well-paced illustrations and text work take you on a journey, and mostso provide lessons for modern architecture, urban design, and survival.







Stephen Addis
77 Dances
(Weatherhill)



Simply exquisite — the first book on Japanese calligraphy by poets, monks and scholars that shows the Momoyama and Edo periods (1568-18680) in large format illustrations. The Zen, the haiku, the landscape, the gossamer. Less talk, go look. The author is a thoughtful practitioner himself and trail guide.








Lew Welch
Hermit Poems
(Four Seasons Foundation)













I saw myself
a ring of bone
in the clear stream
of all of it

and vowed
always to be open to it
that all of it
might flow through

and then heard
"ring of bone" where
ring is what a
bell does





TOWNES
For a Steve Earle recording — singing like Steve Earle, with hand claps and yells and sometimes as if through a bullhorn — this isn't disappointing. But since he is singing all Townes Van Zandt songs, he's about ruining every song with all of the above. It's a mottled mess. Of the two-disc CD, head for "the basics" CD. Townes Van Zandt sparkled and generally reached the backside of heroic. He wasn't singing his songs, he was giving them to us. Hand delivered. Listening to his good friend try his ever-loving best to even attempt a delivery is all heart and with thanks. But now go to the originals and be scared to death.






Journal of the short poem, No. 7, Spring 2009
NO/ON, edited Philip Rowland
Minami Motomachi 4-49-506
Shinjuku, Tokyo, 160-0012, Japan
noonpress@mac.com


A Japnese bound treat of special wonder. Now 7 issues, over years of practice and particular care. The poets range internationally and move well together.



take care
of being
taken care of
of the moment
by the moment
for the moment
— Sheila E. Murphy








Thomas Meyer
Kintsugi
(Punch Press
810 Richmond Avenue
Buffalo, NY. 14222-1167)


Done up in the full glory once championed by Jonathan Williams at Jargon Press — bold stroke cover design and title page with no misunderstanding where you are about to be engulfed. Here is this long poem/reverie, even personal prayers, by Thomas Meyer, gentleman and long time companion to Williams. New publisher in Buffalo, Punch Press has done this well. Robert Kelly has come forth with an introduction. With visual images by the one and only Erica Van Horn. Kintsugi — the practice of repairing ceramics with gold-laced lacquer to illuminate the breakage. One lover speaks to another's passing.




All dogs bark his name.
He who has gone

there from here
past time's gap. Jumped.




Lorine Niedecker
Immortal Cupboard

Living for years in the solitude of rural Wisconsin, poet and experimental writer Lorine Niedecker (1903-1970), chose what many might see as a lonely path. Out of her very deliberate and austere lifestyle came a poetics of observation so acute that some literary critics have described her as the 20th century's Emily Dickinson. Taking cues from Niedecker's work, filmmaker Cathy Cook combines original live-action footage, animation, archival images and the poet's only audio interview (with Cid Corman) to unfurl the poet's psychological and physical landscape. Through a repetition of images, text and sounds that mirror Niedecker's own processes and forms, Cook gives new voice and visibilioty to the extraordinary works of this very private poet. Longhouse will soon have DVD copies of this excellent film available.




Patti Smith
twelve


Ample time now for you to have listened to the Steve Earle noted above and either agree with me, or be sick of me, and to substitute the Patti Smith cd in your play list. This is exactly what we did the other day in the hot sun while on a job painting a house — the Smith and not the Earle got us through the late day strtetched hours of finishing up fussy cornice and window trim painting. Smith does twelve cover songs here that she has pretty much grown up with, as we have, as her crackerjack band has, and the familiarity and play-to-invention shows. Highlights occur with Hendrix, Neil Young, the Stones, even Tears for Fears, George Harrison (The Beatles), Allman Brothers, and these days few do Bob Dylan better than Patti Smith, and probably her turn of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit is the best track on the cd. Her take on The Doors, Paul Simon, and the Airplane don't quite hit it. But with each song you can finally hear the words! Leave it to a poet.



Agha Shahid Ali
The Veiled Suite the collected poems
(Norton)














SNOWMEN


My ancestor, a man
of Himalayan snow,
came to Kashmir from Samarkand,
carrying a bag
of whale bones:
heirlooms from sea funerals.
His skeleton
carved from glaciers, his breath
arctic,
he froze women in his embrace.
His wife thawed into stony water,
her old age a clear
evaporation.

This heirloom,
his skeleton under my skin, passed
from son to grandson,
generations of snowmen on my back.
They tap every year on my window,
their voices hushed to ice.

No, they won't let me out of winter,
and I've promised myself,
even if I'm the last snowman,
that I'll ride into spring
on their melting shoulders.


and forthcoming, early Fall 09
Will Alexander
The Sri Lankan Loxodrome
(New Directions, 2009)



Loxodrome - or rhumba line - the word origin from the French 'point of compass' or the Dutch ' space, room'. The imaginary line (made imagined by Alexander's nautical cosmotics) across the earth's surface bisecting all meridians at the same angle, this being the standard mechanics for plotting a ship's course on a map. With Will Alexander's book of meditations, or homages in grip with Cesaire or on the horns of Sun Ra, we have one lone Sri Lankan sailor, traveling eastward from Madagascar to Sri Lanka, with invasive spectres / amidst the constellations, where one calls the monsoons hermits.


I look through myself
as through the wayward rum of the Sufis
& near the Maldives I know
some greater apparition will appear
unlike Gianini
at the core like a singular upward double
crossing the inward "Chinvat Bridge" *
the crossing point to "the beyond"
unlike the force that corrupts the eyes from without
creating its force from strict material biotics

I am carrying the inks which dissolve the corruption of the gravid
with their weighed negative conservation
with their glossary of urns that imprisons
& denies the sacred impediment
the susurrant infamy which listens

therefore I've cracked
the inner botulism doors
the profane obtrusion
the egalitarian as mystery

as I wander
I travel across the core at eclectic meridians
never canceling my wavering
my dread
my magnetic "failure to observe"*

*Chinvat Bridge: In Sufism 'the threshold of the beyond'
*failure to observe": inaccurate recording of a 'series of events because of divided attention...'



Enjoy the Reading, the Music, the Sparks!

in memory

David Carradine
David Bromige
Harold Norse
William Witherup

JANINE POMMY VEGA






MAJIK’S MALA
( for Harris Breiman )

Majik’s mala click clacking in a quiet room
jerky moves of the bone beads slipping
down the string
Places you wouldn’t think pain knew about
open up, we are re-instructed:
Mother Buddha’s string of beads,
and a hopeful puppet in her sixties
still on the lookout for freedom
It may not come climbing mountains
as before, or plumbing the depths
and positions of sexual nature
It may not come running high speed
through the woods like a dog in the summer hemlocks
May not come trekking out to find death sitting alone
in infinitudes of winter
But in slowly giving up, in the hand unclenched
the personality cooked like soup
inside the skull
Come all you who are hungry
Come and eat.
Too long fixed in place, the body
becomes an ironing board,
a bicycle standing against the wall,
it creaks into use, the slow spokes,
screech of legs propped up in the living room
Locked in a photo frame one has time
to observe mortality click clack
it is not unhappy.


No fixed opinion
when fluid motion is yanked away
it might just as well be heads
as tails click clack
these things do not matter.
Freeze frame of Majik Labdrom’s mirror
the absurdity of us marching dignified
to a graveyard one step two step Oops!
off the curbstone, down like a man in profile
The Punch and Judy Show
to a crowd of San Francisco children
Wap! He’s down! Wap! He’s up again!
click clack click clack clack
An umbrella opens, the taffeta hangs tattered
the spokes like a ribcage sing
in the wind
Fluid moves so rare we notice now
when they come up, like animated movies
Gooy drops his gumball down the sewer
Minnie holds onto her hat as she plunges skyward
off the cliff like a kite.
No references, no grave demeanor
considered opinions melt in the soup bowl
of the skull, click clack
Hey! Comes a moment, Hey!
No limping, no hunched shoulders, no stiff elbows
a body is moving easily over the landscape
Hey, what happened?
Majik Labdrom in meditation
her mala serenely around her neck
each bead in motion, in static grace
each bead in fluid motion.


Majik Labdrom, pronounced ladron,
like a Puerto Rican second story man,
The nice thing about God as a thief
is she takes it from you
willing or not, knowing or not
she takes it, you wake up one morning
and it’s all decided: mobility (or good looks
a perfect ass, a capable memory)
has disappeared.
Coming out of sleep, the chrysalis
kicks off its cocoon, the (choose one)
praying mantis katydid grasshopper’s
arms and legs are littered across the plain
and works of art, the diamond rings
are swimming down in the muck with the snails.

Willow, NY, January 13, 2005

Majik Labdron: Female “Mother” Buddha. Inventor of the chod ceremony, she is often depicted dancing, usually in a graveyard.

Mala: String of prayer beads, worn around neck, or on wrist, or in hand. Each bead can be used for a repetition of the mantra.

Poet, translator, teacher, Janine Pommy Vega is the author of Poems to Fernando (City Lights) to newer titles from Black Sparrow, Godine, and many presses. Long a champion of the underdog, the imprisoned, and the songful, she has made her homes on the west coast, east coast, South America, the Catskills, and traveled much of the world.

BOB ARNOLD









CYCLE



It must be Spring
You said so when I took apart the last

Wall of firewood and broke out of the woodshed —
Spring Has Sprung ! is how you greeted me big smile and all

The peepers are alive in the pond with sunshine
The windchimes won’t quiet down

Is it warm enough to paint the house?
Will spinach and lettuce take to the ground?

When I heave my sledgehammer onto caked ice
At the north door, will it shatter and be gone?

Will you ever feel healthy again?

These are the new questions of Spring
After months and months of deep winter answers

BRINGIN’ IT ALL BACK HOME

To John in Tucson & many other friends ~
No need to ‘pretend’ you are family — you are !

And we are eating fine and well and hardy, even on the road. Thanks for asking. We manage to find a salad bar or some nutrient grain muffins. Yesterday morning, gone at 5:30 A.M., we were no time in Manchester Village, and it was 30 degrees and nothing at all was moving in sleepy tourist town except we did notice small lights and movement in a tiny cafe off from a bookshop (closed), where two young women were busy as bees at work making delicious bakery goods and teas. It couldn't have been more ideal. I noticed through tiny windows on the sidewalk one of the women decorating bread slices with the gummiest pesto spread. She already had lunch on her mind. They had an apple crisp at a very reasonable asking price, and I asked! Susan and I knew this occasion would never be beaten during the day and the day was just raring to go. Sunlight rising over the frosted roofs, job traffic making a go, maintenance trucks and the small compacts now everywhere on rural roads. Hardly anyone drives an old clunker like we have at home until you get deeper into the mountains and the last of the farm lots, and that's where we were heading after the apple crisp and Susan's muffin. Love a place that has maple syrup for your tea. Love a town that offers all-day breakfast. Newburyport, Ma. on the coast line has such a dark windowed breakfast place. We were there the day before. We had come down from the White Mountains that morning to the sea, borrowing the traits of evolution, those mountains still in Susan's hair. My sister Sherry, dead by her own hand, the lost one, right with us, with her mementos we brought along.

This last day of the 4-day road marathon to bring my sister home to New England (from Florida) we went straight up the eastern flank of the Green Mountains. As a young woman she went to college in these mountains, until a musician arrived on campus with his band and stole her away. We’re talking the 1960s. If you look on the map the state forest roughly spreads from Whitingham in the south to Stowe in the north, along routes 7A and 100. That was our partner trail.There is heaven between Manchester and some miles south of Rutland. Rutland has gone to the dogs, but the downtown still has the rough edges of old Vermont meets new age and some ability to make things work properly. The outskirts, like all outskirts now, junked up for the madcap middle-class. The torque to America's rise or downfall. It takes only a few seconds to scram out of the cheesy outskirts, and a savannah returns of maple trees and lilacs everywhere, a bonus year. The apple trees can be boasted about, too. It'd be easy to take the slip and slide ride from Rutland over to Woodstock and eventually Hanover, but the traveler would be cheated out of real Vermont — that's when you turn onto rocky tar-pitted bump shattered route 100 and head north along the Greens...into Stockbridge, Rochester, the mellow grasslands tucked around one corner of the road and what's left of a farm site. Now a Ford dealer is nicely abridged into the barn. The four corners of farm-life is still intact, and that slows the very modest neighborhood traffic down to a full-stop, a nod or wave and maybe even a smile through the windshields. Open the vehicle windows, a cardinal is calling. The sunlight has just crashed its wave over all the pasture. Cows all gone. Cow people all gone. The dandelions are a week behind ours blown to white seed further south at home, so the yellow flower, so abundant, is lionized and terrific. I'll have to get out somewhere along the line and pick one for Susan.

We've got about an hour, tops, between one brash civilization focal point where all the traffic has been left behind, and where we'll pick it up again. In that hour will be small-town — modest libraries with sunken weird hours, unpainted buildings and worn steps leading up into a room with dim lighting. The only place you'll find old cars and old trucks. A child outdoors happy playing with a stick. Women in mens clothing. No latte cafes, no gourmet pizza, no new-age spin. But here's the slow walking thought moments of Emily Dickinson and Lorine Niedecker, so slow it flashes. The new cars are speedy and compartmentalized, so the occupants blink and ask, "Was that a town?" Yes, it had a small village green, buildings old white with forest spruce trim, massive stone steps and foundations. Clothes on a rope clothesline. Maybe no cellphone reception — we left those self-yakkers miles back. The only reception worth your morning are the waterfalls surprising us and originating from a hemlock stand. The sign on a boardwalk access to one of the two falls proclaims one is about to cross upon a facility that is not maintained and one does so at one's own risk. Then I see how well it has been maintained with new spruce rails and bedding. Once upon a time the boardwalk wasn't even here and one traveled to one's desire by a footpath. I see the old footpath, and after enjoying the snow melt froth of the dominant waterfall, which reminds us somewhat of Nevada Falls in Yosemite, we climb over the hand rail and head up the footpath to the wilder and less showy cascade of water. The real mccoy. The one that makes you feel sexual and inspired and just your size. You seem to have reached this spot illegally. The water here is purer than the water inside yourself. Drink some. It's come from the bluest sky of long long ago.

late May 09

A VISIT WITH J.D. WHITNEY






COUSIN CROW:

I know
-----you
know I’m
here.
-----Tell
your friends.



~



COUSIN FOG:

No sense
looking
--------far.
Here we are.


~



COUSIN STUMP:

Where
more of
-------you
once
stood
I
sit.



~



COUSIN GRAVITY:

Yes:
-----just
this little
tug
to
hold me
home
but
nothing more
yet.



~



COUSIN POISON-IVY:

For the berries
birds we love
love
----we
could almost
love
you.



~




COUSIN MOSS:

Surely
-------they
thank you—
those
shaded
stones you
fur.



~



COUSIN SUN:

Giving
shadow.
------Having
none.



~



COUSIN ANT:

All
---your
intricate
cities
-----down
where we can’t
see.



~



COUSIN COYOTE:

I see your shadow
goes
-----where it wants
without you.



~



COUSIN BEAVER:

Ah!
----The
sound of
one
----hand
clapping.



~



COUSIN CATERPILLAR:

Do you
know
----how
far you’re going?



~



COUSIN HOUSEFLY:

Of course
--------you’re
welcome here--
hear
-----our
name for you.

This is from JD Whitney's Longhouse booklet Cousins — not only a small book of poems, but what could be, and so is, an exceptional and easy-to-the-touch book for children. Sit in a circle and enjoy these.

MARSDEN HARTLEY






TO THE NAMELESS ONE



You, who have power over
everything obscure
Listen — come over here; sit by
my side
and let me say the things I want
to say—
I want nothing in the way of artificial
heavens—
The earth is all I know of wonder.
I lived and was nurtured in the
magic of dreams
bright flames of spirit laughter
around all my seething frame.

Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) American painter and poet and one who has never been replaced, wrote this poem late in his life taking stock of all around him, and still all around us.


in memory

Robin Blaser
Sherry Taylor