Redmond Watershed Preserve

It is hard to see the mountain for the forest. This time
of year it is easier. After an early snow blackberries
and wild roses lay flattened. The storm shook loose
all but a few maple and alder leaves and revealed
ravines that brooks trace between hillsides of cedar
and Douglas Fir, salal and ferns. It is clear to me now,
after years walking here, how this watershed tilts rain

and snow toward the sea. I listen for the sound one leaf
makes when it strikes another, or when another buckles
under a sparrow's weight. If I listen long enough

I hear the song the frost sings, the ravine sings, and 

where salmon end their run.

The Jay Calls

Birds erupt outside my hotel window.
Cardinal, wren, robin.
Yack Yack Yack. All aflutter.

Is it about to rain or has Jack returned from nowhere?

He used to stay in the canopy riding the waves
wind and currents presented him,
but the leaves are still against the sky.

Was there ever anything more beautiful
than his sea soaked eyelashes when he tired
and came back dripping to his towel?

The jay calls.

So thirsty he was. Still I can’t look to see his face.

Passaic Headwaters

I came here a lot with Jack after he died.
Now I’m back for the wood thrush I suppose,
and the gnats and mosquitoes.

I take my time along the path. My phone and I
listen for birds. A woodpecker drums
to tell his mate he’s near. My guess a flicker.

Where the sun breaks through the canopy
the smell of warm earth envelops me.
I feel the plants' breath. It's almost visible.

Fronds and leaves and limbs extend.
Some itchy, some sticky. Some burn.
The trail cuts back and the headwaters

are suddenly as loud as a boy splashing down
a ledge or two then quieting into the flowing creek.
I find his spot. It isn’t hard; it’s where sneakers

get soaked through and through. I kneel. Feel
the cool stone through my jeans. Surely spring rains
and snow melt years ago carried him to sea.

A blue jay calls from deep in the leaves. Muffled.
No barking. No giggling. No chasing fireflies.
A common jeering blue jay almost makes me cry.

He calls again.

Even as I lift my Face to Rain

No matter how hard

I try to convince myself

that beyond that spot of water

is the Orient way west

past Hurricane Ridge

across the rolling Pacific.

That bit of water

I see down the gloomy street

under the gloomy sky

is the lake not the sound

teeming with salmon.

Take care of your goldfish

In the October 16 NYT Trilobites blog, we learned, what some of us have long suspected, fish get depressed. "The trigger for most domestic fish depression is likely lack of stimulation," reported Heather Murphy. Fish are naturally curious, Murphy quotes Dr. Victoria Braithwaite who recommends adding new objects to your fish tank, or moving them around.

Since at least in 2008, it has been common knowledge that low levels of anti-depressants are making their way out of our bodies, through the waste stream, and into the ocean (and back into our supply of drinking water). Fairly contained bodies of water, like Puget Sound, don't get flushed thoroughly. Here's a recent summary from 2016 on Vice (and abstract for the underlying research.)

For my Bay Area friends: Drugs in Water.

Here's a poem from five years ago about barnacles and the gasping ssri sea.

If you recall Darwin made his name in barnacles before publishing On the Origin of Species. His friend and mentor, Joseph Hooker, told Darwin that he and his fellow scientists would have little confidence in any speculation about the possibility of species evolving if it came from someone who had not done the real, nitty-gritty taxonomic work of describing some group in detail. Darwin replied to Hooker: “How painfully (to me) true is your remark.” He chose barnacles; he'd collected many in his travels. (Source: Naming Nature.)

In 1854, after 8 years of studying barnacles, Darwin wrote, "I hate a barnacle as no man ever did before, not even a sailor in a slow moving ship."

Just do what you can do. Take care of your goldfish.

an Ars Poetica

an Ars Poetica

Mother says unless you have something nice to say …

she struggles now to finish

to say anything at all.

Mom stopped watching news a long time ago.

Maybe she will watch the weather when there's a storm in the Gulf.

If my sisters push her hard she’ll watch an Antiques Roadshow

and wake smiling when some hidden gem is unearthed

people are happy then.

Dust is wiped away.

What mom didn’t say was that if I had a rock

bleached almost completely white

tumbled smooth by decades of breaking waves

so smooth you can see a glacier’s heart beating inside

and if behind one line of cloud

the sun was setting

and if it was warm,

and if the road was empty,

and if a young crab clasped the culvert grate

and an osprey surveyed the salt marsh from its perch

so that the only noise I hear are pebbles

rocking in the gentle surf and H’s breath.

And if H chose the rock

for a photo she sent her daughter
wishing she were near

what mom didn’t say was

that if I have that rock

I have a poem.

Not grief. Not yet.

If I stare long enough
will these surf-scoured stones
on my window sill glow
green and pink like tourmaline
the way they were animated
by sound and rain when
I bent and picked them up?
Will they glow like embers
seething in a draft from the dark
outside? Do the stones remember
the difference between sound
and bay? Do they remember
when the glacier dragged its feet?
I will come upon more rocks
where sand blunts the ocean's edge
and I will place them on the sill
by the others wet with memory.

From Passaic Headwaters, Truman Beach near Orient, NY, Buffalo Mountain,
and the ones in this poem, from Ft. Worden.

"Sitting Waiting Wishing" by Jack Jackson makes me feel much more sad than this poem; hence the title.

Other notes:  In Praise of Shadows by Tanizaki Jun'ichirō (as the revisions progressed, has become less relevant for this poem). Keats on negative capability. I'm also slowly reading Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

Shipwrecked

Shipwrecked

Bone-tired, salt-sprayed for years

exhaustion washed longing from my body.

I listen for a siren

and welcome rocks.

I take the broken mast and scattered timber

and build a bridal suite

where some day a tree,

resilient of her marriage bed,

would growing, start to die.

This is a time, though stubborn,

when my spirit could be won over

and yet I drown again

at home where the ships all burn.

barnacles

barnacles

sand ran with salt water
back and forth

sallow foam
tumbled down the estrogen enriched beach

over concrete blocks

and asphalt slabs stacked

like uncut gravestones

against the gasping ssri sea

breakwater

sessile in erosive setting

encrusting rebar
turn to chalk lose their name

awareness there
where the water ends each time