#redwoods
the beauty that lies within me is pure
shining bright onto undeserving eyes
the blinding lights of my aura
multicolored, multifaceted, multiplying
as I grow. the light grows bigger and I grow deeper, retreating back into the earth
sprouting and spreading my roots far and wide.
similar to redwoods.
May 30, 2023
May 30, 2023 at 9:11 AM UTC
Once upon a time,
we lived in Shangri-log
It was hollow and cozy
and safe from the fog
We built us a kitchen,
out of sticks and stuff
We built benches and shelter
and swept away the duff
We were working on the hill,
early that spring
Away from our log,
when the bear gave a ring
He raided all of our salty snacks,
and even some of our liquor stash!
And all he left was a big bear mess,
and a pile of.. I'll let you guess...
So we learned our lesson, no more storing food
We cleaned up camp and life was good
But we had to return to our toil
Spreading horse ****
amending soil
The next time we returned
to our big round squat
Something was wrong,
but we didn't know what..
We decided not to worry
and we had a party
We were lit up all night
and the sky was starry...
As the sun was coming up,
the time for sleep rolled around
But as we laid down to rest,
we heard a startling sound...
Beep! Beep! Beep! Filled the air!
And a churning of trees!
They were clearing the area,
We needed to flee!
We snatched up some things,
hid the rest in a stump
Our buddy was collapsing
his tent on the run
We got to the commune,
but no sleep would be found...
We all were uneasy about
bulldozers on ground
At the end of the day,
When the workers were gone
We dashed up the hill,
to check on our zone
Our camp was untouched,
Our things were all fine
But the brush had been cleared
all under the power lines...
And since our log was exposed, it was time to go
(I think we can take a hint, dontcha know...)
We cleaned everything up,
Tore everything down
Well almost everything,
Our old bed's still around
The years have gone by,
The brush has regrown..
It's hard not to wish we could live in our old home...
Apr 23, 2021
Apr 23, 2021 at 4:21 PM UTC
The tree sitter of Nantucket
Lived in a tree and he dug it
He never went down
To visit the ground
So he would **** in a bucket
Apr 14, 2021
Apr 14, 2021 at 2:44 PM UTC
I've got a little black book, with my poems in it
I've got the wind to rock me to sleep
I've got a perpetually dying radio
That brings the news to me
I've got everything I need up in this tree
This tree I live in on my own
I've got books and **** and mobile phones
I've got a little two burner stove
I've got a bright new perspective
And every new day
I know that I'm not all alone
There are squirrels, and birds
And bugs up here
It feels like everybody is home.
Apr 13, 2021
Apr 13, 2021 at 3:29 PM UTC
I invited the band, to make strawberry jam
On top of Strawberry Rock
They asked me "What time?"
I said "Be there by nine."
They arrived promptly at one o'clock
But once they began, the sea kissed the sand
And the music never stopped.
Apr 13, 2021
Apr 13, 2021 at 2:53 PM UTC
A rock off the coast has no need to boast.
A rock off the coast just has to be.
There's no pressure, no stress, no need to impress.
It simply resides in the sea.
Apr 13, 2021
Apr 13, 2021 at 2:42 PM UTC
Far above me they rise
like giants in the skies
Presenting their beauty for all to see
Standing tall and mighty while their branches flow free
Dec 22, 2020
Dec 22, 2020 at 7:33 AM UTC
Believe that there is something bigger than you
And if you cannot fathom that thought
sight
Think of a redwood tree,try to hold it
And realize you cannot
Let its massive
Unholdableness
Seed its likeness in you
Jun 14, 2019
Jun 14, 2019 at 3:50 AM UTC
The trees you once told me to follow home...
They're gone.
You told me to burn them to my memory so that I would always be able to find my way home.
Now I'm lost, Mama.
Places of only memory now.
Outside the gate.
Stuck on the wrong side.
Nothing feels right.
Giants that once stood so tall and guarding.
Cut down as if they had never been.
Mama, I can't find my way home.
The trees are gone.
Oct 3, 2018
Oct 3, 2018 at 6:38 PM UTC
Towering Shards of Castles shriek
A haunting discord, bittersweet,
In the Ancient Library..
All the while, Lonely Streets
Harbour Phantoms and touch the Unborn Sun..
Through the Forest, quiet still,
While Jagged Towers shriek so shrill,
I seek The Cryptic Pantheon.
Sep 17, 2015
Sep 17, 2015 at 4:23 AM UTC
When we were eighteen the valley of the plums, prunes and apricots
kept us beaming. I had come from the north, from the nuclear
town on the Columbia River.
I never yearn for the desert sand in the wind, or the feeling
that above and beyond the first mountain men were doing things
not meant for the rest of the world to view, except that one of
those men was my father.
The company moved us to the new place, the California farm
town. Here the soil, worked hard by orchardists,
yielded a sweet aroma that persuaded us to be fond of the earth.
We would go to school and work the summer jobs, slicing cots
and stuffing fruit in cans all night, and then I would fall in love.
That is where the “we” enters.
I drove an old English sports car with a wooden frame and
wire-spoked wheels, a windshield that would drop down for
a full dose of the highway wind.
Dwellers arrived here quickly from afar. Some said it
was for the weather. Never very hot or cold, an incubational
paradise for the thousands of acres of fruit teees.
We had to stand back from the evening bonfires, and were sorrowful,
watching the fruit trees chopped, piled and torched.
This progress made me think of the American Indians.
I had seen them netting salmon on the Columbia River at Celilo Falls before the dams,
the gray concrete walls that turn gravity into a light bulb.
(I would like to flip a switch and turn on the river).
We asked ourselves what would be the limits of this 1960s
unbridled growth. Some were talking of expanding
to the moon, while we were considering holing up
in a mountain retreat.
The valley of the fruit became unrecognizable. Next
in my neighborhood a multi-story building slammed into the sky.
If even one could be built here, why not
one more Hong Kong?
We drove to the mountains in the spring when the western
slopes filled with wild flowers, and flew kites and laughed into the
face of the oncoming wind, and kissed. Love might
conquer all.
The ocean side of the range is where we knew we wanted to be.
Riding waves and kicking around in the kelp beds at
Pleasure Point. Less room for a building boom, unless steel platforms were
erected over the waves. Who knows that such an idea is even
now on the drawing boards.
We married and made the move and remain there still. A tiny house
built during one of the greater wars of the last century by
Hawaiian flower farmers, who knew nothing about how to
build a sturdy house, and had no blossom money for their dreams.
My dream is awake there though, the little house and the tiny rooms
that only want to hear the birds of the forest come near.
Daffodils and roses, enormous zucchinis, and an old
pear tree that I write poems about in the spring, and
two girls who love the ocean.
That’s about it. My whole autobiography composed this bright
sunny morning in the hills above San Luis Reservoir in
the central valley, where I come from time to time to write
and ponder the tall grass.
My parents are close by in the national veteran’s cemetery,
where I put them a few sad years ago.
I see some of the details are missing. It’s easy to fill
in the missing information–the story most of us might tell.
We’ve wept over the loss of farms, flowing rivers,
and fought the war against the war, and wondered
why we cannot just live in a teepee at the base of Yosemite Falls.
In the background, a steady trickle of death, disease, work.
I am guilty of confusing work with death and disease, but that’s
just my own hard-earned opinion.
There have been birthday cakes and communions, bicycle rides
and Monterey fish eating, candles burning in winter storms,
old tool sheds full of her paintings, a stack of notebooks with
my scribbling.
The valley of the fruit continues stacking buildings.
The redwoods here continue growing.
Apr 24, 2015
Apr 24, 2015 at 9:42 PM UTC
***This summer I saw mountains
Thrusting out of the sea,
And mountains mellowed with age,
Rounded, softer, quietly returning to the sea.
I saw Redwoods: massive
Majestic, alive,
And marveled as I held seeds
From which they thrive.
I wondered at hands that could be so old
As those that carved the living stone
In rocks by the sea;
I stood in awe hundreds of feet
Beneath blankets of branches
Of ancient trees.
I listened as mountainous streams
Sang songs of the sources
Of life-giving waters.
I saw flowers too many to name
Running up and down grassy hillsides,
In and out of pine-scented forests,
Along rivers,
Through meadows,
Etc.
Etc.
Etc.***
*But why am I telling you this?
Because, of course,
I must prove I am free,
That I can see beauty
all around me.
But it seems
The less I feel free,
The less beauty I see, and
The louder I shout, “I am free, I am free”,
The more I scream, “I see, I see”.
It’s all a game,
You see;
you see.
I just try to follow the rules.*
August 1, 1970
(edited 10/11/2014)
Oct 12, 2014
Oct 12, 2014 at 3:40 PM UTC