WAITING
you drive through the hot
July afternoon down a road
gone fluid at the horizon.I make bread
and set the loaves
on the windowsill to rise.You stop for coffee
and stand beside
the car, stretching,
looking into the distance.I polish the table
until it gleams,
and put on it
a white bowl
full of red apples.You travel in the fast lane,
bringing with you
road music,
the scent of sagebrush
and the sound of wind.
SNOW BLIND
I ate fresh strawberries
on the summit of Mt. Hood,
saw the huge shadow
of the mountain
on the tops of clouds,
smelled the hot sulfur
of fumaroles.My goggles didn’t fit
and on the way down,
part slog and part glissade,
I took them off,
and by the time I got home
I was snow blind.
There isn’t much to do then
but wait for it to go away,
or much to say other than it hurts
and it’s better not to cry.I went snow blind again
when you left,
after some other summit,
some other huge shadow,
some other light
that brightened and failed.There isn’t much to do then
but wait for it to go away,
or much to say other than it hurts
and it’s better not to cry.
WHO ARE YOU WHEN YOU’RE ALONE?
“Who are you when you’re alone?”
That’s what he asked,
but I knew it was a trick question
so I just kissed him and told him
I’m the one who waits.
He wouldn’t like me when I’m alone.
I sit cross-legged on the bed
with a pad of lined yellow paper
and tell secrets about him to strangers.
I’m arrogant and petty.
I make worlds and throw them away.
I don’t comb my hair
or keep my promises.
I’m a sniper, committing acts of treason,
a traveler, a hitchhiker.
I stay up all night
surrounded by ashtrays, cups of coffee
and books.
I live with words and love them
all through the sweet dark nights
when I’m alone.
FROG LAKEAs lakes go, this one is modest at best, small, round, shallow,
on a sunny day it mirrors a postcard perfect view of Mt. Hood.
It has frogs, of course, thousands of them, maybe millions,
tiny, walnut-colored amphibians that walk around the shoreline
with a strangely spider-like lethargy.
In early summer it’s hard to hike around the lake
without stepping on them. They don’t startle easily,
alternately hopping and walking three or four steps then stopping,
calmly certain they have successfully avoided any conceivable danger.
They don’t seem to care much for water.
There aren’t any power boats allowed at this lake,
so the serious picknickers and boaters go down the road a ways,
maybe to Timothy Lake or somewhere with newts,
animals made almost entirely of instinct,
hanging just below the surface of the water,
stubby, earth-colored creatures
that look like old beer-bellied men dozing their way
toward last call at the corner bar.
They remember to breathe occasionally,
straighten and gulp unattractively,
then sink again into that somnolent, bent pose,
always oriented toward the shore.I’ve gotten off the point here, with the newts.
I have a tendency to wander, lose the point or the path,
end up finding newts when the point was frogs,
or more accurately, a lake. Frog Lake.
My mother’s ashes are scattered at Frog Lake.
It was probably illegal to do that, the dead have traditional places–
the ocean would have been okay, but she was a river and lake woman,
and I’m sure she feels more comfortable with frogs and hawks,
pine needles and trout than she would have
with whales and seaweed, octopuses and coral.The frogs at Frog Lake aren’t really frogs–they’re toads.
But how would that look on the tourist maps for Oregon–Toad Lake?
They don’t have many predators, none that I’ve ever seen,
so I suppose they have the usual toad defense, toxic skin,
probably the same poison as that sometimes lethal
Japanese gourmet treat–pufferfish. Wise parents
would have the kids wash their hands after playing with these frogs.Frog Lake. I like it there:
a place that grew up with the wrong name, a picture-perfect view of Mt. Hood,
and now my own heritage mingled with the reeds and toads and water.
HUNTING OPALS
They tried to teach me
to pick opals
from the other rocks–
the worthless ones.
But I’m a slow learner,
pleased by the silken feel
of the wrong stone,
lingering over the harsh,
crystalline certainty
of a chunk of granite
or a broken shell,
patterned like the wind
would be, if it were visible.
SONGS I CANNOT HEAR
A price is paid for this green paradise,
this place of tepid water, shallow roots,
the tangled trails you seldom recognize
through webs of vines and soft flesh of new fruits.
There’s a restless stretching: evolution,
something stirring the loam beneath the ferns,
a snout breaking through the surface tension,
something mud-colored, that is new, and learns.
I like that this is home for rough new things,
shaped by ozone, instinct, rank scent of earth:
they’ll make an antic music no one sings,
about the raw and labored edge of birth.
I plant my mannered garden every year,
and touch the notes of songs I cannot hear.