poetry – Page 3 – alive in the sea of information

Tamalpais

Living in the East Bay, our gaze draws westward, and this is not hard to understand. In the west looms San Francisco, our imperial city; our iconic bridges, the Golden Gate and the Bay Bridge; winter rainstorms are born there; and the sun, traversing the north-south longitude, sets in the west. And quietly, holding up the sky, Mount Tamalpais anchors my western horizon. Tamalpais is always there, grounding me; at times just in the corner of my eye, and other times commanding my full attention, whether near or far. My love for Mount Tamalpais has grown deep over the years – many chapters of my story feature this mountain. In the 19^th century, the ukiyo-e artist Hokusai captured his love for a revered Japanese mountain with his famous series of woodblock prints Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.

Inspired by two books, Opening the Mountain: Circumambulating Mount Tamalpais A Ritual Walk by Mathew Davis & Michael Farrell Scott and Tamalpais Walking: Poetry, History and Prints by Tom Killion and Gary Snyder, I persuaded my dear friends, to walk from Muir Woods to East Peak, the top of Mount Tamalpais. At the end of March, we covered a distance of approximately twelve miles, spanning a range of plant communities, including redwoods, mixed evergreen forests, grasslands and chaparral, as well as plants, such as ceanothus, endemic to the mountain adapted to the Serpentine soils. Our journey gave amazing views of the greater Bay Area and we saw Mount Tam’s sister mountains: Black Mountain (west), Mount St. Helena (north), Mount Diablo (east) and Mount Hamilton (south). The artist Tom Killion began his love affair with Tamalpais as a young man, and inspired by Hokusai, he created beautiful prints of the mountain from multiple viewpoints, many of them featured in Tamalpais Walking.

Last week, cycling from Oakland to Richmond on the Bay Trail, I travelled a diverse landscape featuring mudflats so alive with plants and animals coexisting with trucks and cars speeding by on asphalt and cement highways. This is nature – mankind a dominating part of a community of flora and fauna; this is not wilderness. Throughout the journey, there was my friend Mount Tamalpais, on the horizon, a guidepost measuring my progress, a signpost holding close my memories.

embrace and see

Some memories are like small towns on country roads;

once well travelled, now enigmas signifying an interstate exit.

Sister reminded me Mom’s favorite perfume was Faberge’s Tigress.

Dad bought her Tigress every Christmas.

Tigress: the sleek bottle containing the amber liquid crowned with a tiger skin stopper.

Unconscious memories no longer a mystery.

“Comprehend without your head

and without your ears, listen

to noiseless, un-mouthed words.”[1]

My mother was a Tigress – that was no mask.

She comprehended the noiseless, un-mouthed words of others.

Listening without her head and ears she always saw the truth behind other’s masks.

No matter how deep it cut-to-the-bone she always spoke her truth.

See suffered no fools.

And she always gave herself away for the benefit of others.

Across time and space I see you.

I embrace you.

I love you Tigress for all you did and hoped for me.

Namaste.

Written while listening to Caetano Veloso singing Cucurrucucu Paloma en Vivo inspired by the lyrics translated from Portuguese to English.

[1]A quote from Attar’s poem The Conference of the Birds, translated by Shole Wolpe

Arc (reveal)

The room is charged. His eyes two points that arc, revealing his story. He has fought the pain. But there has been a price. He is so tired and there is so much he has forgotten.

“I sit with this room. With the grey walls that darken into corner. And one window with teeth in it. Sit so still you can hear your hair rustle in your shirt. Look away from the window when clouds and other things go by. [Ninety-seven] years old. There are no prizes.” [1]

[1]Michael Ondaatje, Coming Through Slaughter

mend (adjure)

Spring has roared awake.

Last Friday’s fervent downpour.

New leaves brilliant greens.

Soft. Supple. Hopeful.

dear companions, follow Gary Snyder’s footprints:

Hiking Muir Woods to East Peak Tamalpais.

Day born in fog, climbing above misty clouds through rainy redwood rainforest.

Dappled sunshine coastal oaks and bay laurels; woodlands and meadows;

warmth on my skin.

Ridgeline a soft blanket enfolds the city, ocean sleeps

cozy quilt.

Winding serpentine swale, wild turkey shares stories.

Manzanita blooms humming honey bees.

Twisted Pacific Madrona mark dry north side trail.

Paradox: Winter rains; little fog. A dryland.

Oasis of redwood trees, quench their timeless thirst by a spring.

Summiting: St. Helena to the North, Diablo to the East, Hamilton to the South.

From Tamalpais guardian of the West.

My mind locked in the winter of my Father’s illness. Naked and cold, not yet open to the thaw.

Will the hot sun of New Mexico burn winter away?

William Carlos Williams writes in Spring and All:

“Dead, brown leaves under them

Leafless vines –

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish, dazed spring approaches-

They enter the new world naked,

Cold, uncertain of it all

Save that they enter. All about them

The cold, familiar wind –“

Round Midnight

bittersweet

hope tinged with sadness

lonely cup of coffee with Hopper’s Nighthawks

searching for something; wishing to share

rounded body of all things in one

painting

rough and smooth

wet and dry

loosing yourself in the the act, life emerges

rounded body of all things in one

“things that gave way entered unyielding masses,

heaviness fell into things that had no weight.”

From Ovid’s TheMetamorphoses, Book I, translated by Horace Gregory

Written listening to Thelonious Monk and Gerry Mulligan play Round Midnight on Mulligan Meets Monk recorded in New York City; August 12 – 13, 1957

to hold and admire

A Mother

holds her child

a duet

a pieta

A baby

admires

the harmony of the trinity

Three apples

Three pointers

Three billboards

outside Ebbing, Missouri

A child

grasps

the stability of four

four voices

four seasons

four gospels

four random points

in space

An adult

Ponders the tango of Adam and Eve

Searching for sincerity

between heaven and earth

open and clear

A grave illness resides with my father and we, his family, breathe on, our minds plagued with a dull ache that cannot be suppressed. But what goes through a person’s mind at this time? Is death as simple as opening a window? Do you have a clear view of what lays beyond or are you adrift in the darkness? Czeslaw Milosz writes in his poem Winter:

“…when the sun rises beyond the borderlands of death,

I already see the mountain ridges in the heavenly forest

Where beyond every essence, a new essence waits.”

Reveal in the darkness

It is in the darkness that kindness is revealed.

Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem says it best:

Kindness

“Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to mail letters and

purchase bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

it is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.”

bestow: offer

Horses

The gift he bestowed. Unaware – so absorbed by the struggle. We walked the line for many years never breaking step but the day came when the path branched. He said stay organized and keep your integrity. Comet-like, I return. Offering my stories, colored by the years and buffered by wisdom, born of sadness and joy. We sit side-by-side sharing memories, telling stories, gazing at infinite shadows. Untold devotion.

Farewell to a Sung Mountain Traveler by Po Chu-I

No more climbing peaks for me, no more following streams, so who abides there, part of rock and stream, mist and cloud?

When you reach the sunlit south exposure of Sung, sing out these lines, chant them until it’s thirty-six peaks understand.

1000years — Share. Robin L. Chandler, 2017.

“…means something,

something absolute: whenever I start

to explain it, I forget words altogether.”

T’ao Chien; Tang Dynasty

Driving through the neighborhoods and vineyards of Sonoma County, I am devastated by the October 2017 wildfire destruction and deeply saddened by the loss of life and home. Without words. I am humbled by and respectful of the latent power of nature. Nature shares: water, wind and fire; without words.