Nature

Exposure to wilderness, in addition to stilling the noise inside (sooner or later), and accomplishing more earthy things like balancing the ions in your body, brings out the nature inside us, too.

My invitation to you: give yourself the gift of some time in the wild. Preferably some place that surrounds you and makes you feel small inside nature’s big harmony. Without any pressure to make art, just absorb, take as long as you need to slow down (or be fast, doesn’t matter, there’s no judgment), and see if later on, you feel like crystallising something about the experience in art, if only to help you remember the affectionate touch nature gave you.

The following poems each have an imprint of nature contact in them.

I.

There are places where rivers have made lace
of the mountains, light pith cliffs of lime
and butter-foam stones, devoured by caves
and furrowed with passages, tubes, ruts
and spaces that lead only to further spaces.
Rivers appear and disappear in the wet dark
like spirits in the body,

myrrh is coaxed from nubile limbs of the desert trees 
smoke is tumbled in the censer like a dream is tumbled in the bed
what is lit and tipped aglow, drying the humors of a body

is what is missing now, folded behind slants of ribboned rock
the red knit of hanging lights is soaked in a mysterious wet
the flame i make is a cloak, a groan, a lump of coal 
hushed into the great lung

II.

Head is rock face,
sheer dropping cliffs. Look at the depth
of this plunge, incredible
darkness. The roots of trees
-strong grips -
hold this mount together
hold to themselves
like bodies to their bones,
with such a sweet hold. A loving lock,
we will never let you go. 

Wilderness, again, it is always wilderness
that calls - just the echo. Not the virgin fresh
sound, but the soft slide
after many reflections
off far off faces
surfaces slick or pored
still there, always around me,
holding captive, holding childlike.
Here's the held of this sound,
this ring is me.

Caves, there is a system of them
structured inside me, gap on gap
...it's mostly nothing, as though you could build
a piece from negative space
and imply the build around it.
I am inverse, replete, full from this emptiness,
glutted full, so gorgeously full
of the gorge.
Battered by my mystery, my wordless,
centered, you have wrought this song in me,
from your circles inside circles
of gold.

III.

Fill the landscape with sound.
Each form is a sound.
Bell rung - tree.
Mountain - low, round.
The ridge runs along the spine.
The body is full, like a bowl filled with water.
Ringing, ringing love ringing love ringing ringing
Forest is thick - like hair
I gather into a braid.
Feet are broad and flat
large leaves.
But brown. Dead this time of year.
Step into the riverbed. Sink a little.
Fill the river with sound.
Sand will hold it together.
Bring over the birds, they will like this.
Also the seraphim
bring them back
I think they would want to see this.

IV.

Where did you come from, creature? You are a species
I have never seen, a white, ivory wet thing
tucked below the lip of the cold creek.
I might not have seen you at all,
quiet, dignified thing!
Noble in your strange embodiment
you are a commander all of your own,
having nothing to do with me,
moving your own picky way
through the water. Follow your elfin eyes
and the course of your skin.
The pattern of your arms
the bulbs and tapers of your body.
I wish I could hold you in my hand
and touch you very, very
tenderly.

V.

Animals move ghosting
through the long braids of grass,
following scents and trails of brilliance
somewhere in the direction of the sun's seeping.
Look for the sinking stern of the ship of skies
Look for the upended wheel of stars blinking and staring
blue and fairy white in the bottomless black sac
look for the smell of the animals
and where it has led them,
look for the pocket you tuck yourself in
and call it your life.

VI.

This part of the redwoods is guided by a painted trail
someone colored in a paste of spices along the floor
through fire-red needles, rinds of cedars, and sprouting pale green trees 
the soft hair of the trees are in our hands, the smell of turning over things
in our minds.
  
The mouth gave me a tumble round the other side
the seaside, the bright side, the salt side
the wind and the sun
the flat white stones side.
In the eyes-made picture it is a white sand floor side,
shoots of grass and reeds, and somewhere to throw the blanket side
to collapse on and look at the wheeling of the sky 
counting months of wonders 
here it is again, here I forge the side,
the beating singing cold 
the banks, the wet green,
the blunt brown clay,
the piercing bird
dividing the sky
down the middle.

the wind pushes them away, southside 
down through the plowing waves, prairie grass-side 
furrowing animals in their systems and mounds
all netting out
my echo and my ache.

VII.

Asleep in green grassy fields, my dreams are washed in sun and wind, the bloom of pink, the sugary dust, the looming.
Spindle of towers, blue-swept deep,
across the stroke of clouds.

VIII.

Under a crinkled hide
of dark fir, I am pulled into the wood,
holding on to something wonderful
the way heat holds on all night
to a black top road.
I am shuttered in the coat,
foam rind, cut of cork, 
in the fur of the big red trees. Yes.

Sequoia, I was spooled in like a handkerchief
tucked into a knot of wood,
isn't it surprising how small I can be,
pushed into myself so many times?

Now uncurling.  

Thump in the distance is the sound
of unplumbed deep 
that pulls us to you. 

Needled, slanted
ghost-pined,
i long for you, life, i long for you.

IX.

New is the dawn, eyes unopened,

filmy and sheathed
in milk-gray lakes of paint, 
in moss and loam
where the light filters through the veils 
hung between us, 
ladies of the forest.

Arms knotted together,
slung over the gap, my singers you
are a hammocked bridge 
from where we curled in the rocks
and tucked feathers into soily nooks,
to this place of heaped and glimmering riches.

We track through the snow in silver pelts.
We stop for claws and pellets
under feathered evergreen
awnings. We follow the compass of the sun
to the place where we are born. We leave prints
for the others, and bend the grass. 

We whistle and hiss. We find our way.

X.

On white-clean branches each point 
of the prick of twigs is splayed 
towards the many 
degrees of light. This is a discipline,
each pick craning to spread its mineral green
to life so automatic.
Water climbs, minerals leash out unbound,
and then green, 
everywhere green green green!

XI.

if i ever knew this kind of story,
it was as an animal,
tracking through the ice
into hollows of rot and trees,
across black-scratched lakes.

I knew cold as a drive, a hunt
for darkness. Swift in my rumbling way,
I looked for space
where i could lay heavy down
in my own rolls of fur
and dream.

XII.

Standing in crosscurrents, interleaved
between streams, knee-sunk and entered by a cold
conveyed by stones into the bridges
of my architectural feet,
I give up most sensations, but that of ice,
and just this familiar
feeling to it all.

The image might come, of standing in a river like this,
and whether it's because of actual memories of standing in a river
or more the other way around, that the cause for standing in a river
feeling icewater rush all around my legs, led to the experiences
that attached themselves to my life,
either way here I am again, between flows and
wondering numbly how to proceed. Or even if and whether -
maybe it's just about standing a bit longer
in this rich cold space
appreciating tug, counterpoint
and resistance.

~~

Thumbnail image respectfully lifted from Patrick Benson’s illustrations for North: the Amazing Story of Arctic Migration by Nick Dowson