The Whitewater

There are times when I think much of water. Years I spent kayaking it. The passion of rapids are a mind freeing experience I can only hope to relate to those who haven't been in her arms. There is a matching of skill that is needed to battle it and every man who heads to the river fights, in a great part, the same fight. In no other sport do I feel my metal is tested more. In this piece I bring you into the grasp of the whitewater.



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C’mon fellows, land is not for you
Take leave of shore-folk, go where there are few
Know something not as shallow as the river
But as deep as the ocean-mother

Cast your kayak into this liquid chaos
Look above, there removed in this place of hanging moss
A canyon misplaced, not for humans and their kind
But a home of small creatures and their swine

Face up this eddy, taste the current with tongue of paddle
Let it reach for you, grab you up, prepare you for battle
There as yet, just ripples in the stream before
Around bend of corner, an ancient, evil lion’s roar

Oh Lord, Oh Lord! The whitewater!

C’mon fellows, take to the cobalt waters
Let yourself traverse the current toward your slaughter
Let yourself be struck of chaos and fury, and its siren song
Know the moods and faces, where you fit, how you belong

Deft in your strokes the paddling leads you forward
Will you know how you are: stubborn, weak, just a coward?
At water’s edge you fall in a downward crush
In the midst there is pause, a latent, sleeping hush

An awakening to which you rise to a woman enraged
In her arms your aching muscles strain and rattle her cage
Forgiven are the laws that time designs, frozen in a suspended kiss
Enamored in such power within this dark mighty abyss

Oh Lord, Oh Lord! The whitewater!

C’mon fellows let ye not be afraid
There are tracks by which life is laid
You either come into life a whisper and live overlooked
Or you come into life an echo like the bubbling brook

Adventure rears up in you curses and screams
Without them your life is a hopeless scheme
Take into your hands your beating heart
Wrest from it emotional color from which you animate your art

Be submerged in these cold waters, hold your breath
Do not think of times ahead or behind, not of death
Open your eyes in this alien world
Let their be a vivid reckoning in this whirlpool swirl

Oh Lord, Oh Lord! The whitewater!

C'mon fellows escape the rapids, look back to waterfall
There split in two this canyon like a king's great hall
Where mist washes over your face, light spears the froth
Attracted to the beauty like the flames fascinate the moth

In an eddy above the next challenge your kayak beats the rock
It is as if you beat the door in the hopes it will unlock
The thumping harmonizes with the watery crash
A reaching out into the current pulls you out so fast

Looking down the canyon pool-drops fall away beyond sight
One after another they echo in frothy white
Ribbons of veiled current are your lonely path
Deft paddle strokes armor you against the fury and the wrath

Oh Lord, Oh Lord! The whitewater!

Rouse

A short poem about a morning-clear after a night spent in bad weather in the mountains.



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Lay me in the fog in my tent
Not above or below it
Spent

Wake me up from my slumber
Awake and not tired
Unencumbered

Sweep away this white sheet
Show me the world
Sleek

Seasons of me

I learned long ago that Mother Nature is a powerful force. It is with this in mind that I write this poem.

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I am not a man or beast
I am not alive at all
I am the wind on the coattails of dusk and dawn

I am fury
I am happiness

I am every emotion

the soft rain on spring grass
the heavy snows on mountain pass
the old man, gray beard to his knees
the breeze that blows those falling leaves

I am, I am so many things I am

Hear my roar and you will know me
I am storm clouds boiling
Hear my echoes and you will know me
I am dark canyon falls splashing
Hear my whispers and you will know me
I am Winds afternoon hustle

Look for me on horizon, I am there
see me from mountaintop, I am there
know me at your toes, I am there
listen to me in your heart, I am there

And know the shifting colors of meadow at dawn
know the hungry fish feeding at dusk
know the rolling ocean deep at sea and its dangerous hush
know the rumbling Earth that groans and crushes
know all of me that yearns to be
heartbeats in your chest
breath caught in your throat
thoughts froze in your skull

Know also the seasons of me
the summer-fall-winter-spring
Listen to my children’s
cackling, cheering and chanting
Listen to their calling
hoping, dreaming, laughing
hurt, hunger, suffering

they know me

no name is needed
but if you must call me something
You may call me 'Mother'

Leaves of fall

Fall-like weather comes to mind when I think of summer so far. This is a poem about falling leaves and the trees they cling to...



Green wonders that birth me
breath and I will suckle
hold your breath
Release me

Silhouette

Say a man’s been down on his knees,
giving the world its plow and seeds
Backs been a’broken long ago,
nothing taken gonna give ‘em less to show
Through the darkness are whispered promises
and dreams that yet persist
Harbored in his soul a guiding light
and a place in him that still has fight

Say enough to him and he may show you
the paths he ventured, things he knew
Cause there was a time when he had vowed,
he'd never be forced to bend down and bow
Just as proud men take hard falls,
there are those who add gravity on to make ‘em stall
Knocking 'em down so hard and wounded,
few can hold onto the reasons they really did

Say a man's awoken to a day's ghostly gray,
and seen out from the cloudy shelter a light’s pale ray
Gotta see it those angels that he's paid the toll,
don’t they know a man’s offering his bloody soul!
Tears dried up from the efforts but not the sweat,
from the dirt a man rises up a silhouette
Cause once down he can keep there 'till his last good bye
or he can stand up and thunder out his mightiest war cry

This Mountain Scene

There is something deep and foreboding about high places and especially of those that fly there. Something more about the Raven, black as night and eyes a-piercing. So often, I've wondered what they are looking at, what it is exactly they find so interesting. Because they seem, in all places you find them, more intelligent and hardy, full of wit and quicker than most. In my poetic mind, seeing though these eyes should be so very, very facinating? So it was then, in a mountain scene, I traveled with the lonely Raven...



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Oh Raven (!) who flies black against the day
Swing your eyes downward across the land
Tell me what you see, how the forests lay
How the meadows brighten on a cool summer’s morn
How the rivers crash and cascade down cliffs shiny and gray
How the lakes slumber with fish at rest neath star-struck heavens
How the wind ruffles forest leaves across dry rock beds
How herds of elk bed down in fields of high green grass
Tell me Raven all you perceive!

Oh Raven (!) who sits perched high above
Swing your eyes downward across the land
Tell me what you hear, how the sounds play
How they whistle and croak, hoot and holler
How they hem and haw, creak and groan
How they bugle and growl, bubble and gurgle
How they whisper and sigh, murmur and cry
How they moan like the glacier, breathe like the forest
How they sing like the ocean, purr like the bubbling brook
How they resonate and hum, suffer and grieve
Tell me Raven all you perceive!

Oh Raven (!) who dances on currents of wind
Swing your eyes downward across the land
Tell me what you think, how your mind works
What you see in Moon’s eyes when she peers at you
What you know of the stars, the way they swim in darkness
What you grasp of life, how it begins and ends
What you pray to and believe, what god you may have
What you ponder of when lone on mountaintop
What you wonder of this mountain scene
Tell me Raven all you perceive!

Oh Raven (!) who swoops above sharpened ridgeline
Swing your eyes downward across the land
Tell me where you go, what emotions you have witnessed
What birth has wrought to mothers grasp, the fear and happiness
What courage you have seen in the face of hungry wolves
What lonely onlooker you have spied facing sunfire’s death and her colours
What smiling fool you have sighted screaming and hollering success
What laughing coyotes you have spoken too about the coming freeze
Tell me Raven all you perceive!

Oh Raven (!) who is sheltered from these low places
Swing your eyes downward across the land
Tell me of your home; show me these high places in the snows
Where thunder and lightening bicker like an old couple
Where storm lays down wind and rain, washes the land of dirt and grim
Where big things seem tiny, just echoes you can barely hear
Where life is not lonely, it is full and hungering
Where days are not in hours, but in the comings of morning and the leavings of day
Where things are not always free, not always tied to a warm, gentle green
Where you are steadfastly at watch, eyes ever in concert with nature
This Raven who understands this wild place
Telling me all that he perceives with such honesty and grace
I, for one, wish I had wings and could fly black against the day

In this wilderness hour

Nature is so multi-dimensional. It never can make sense in a mathematical, technical sense. For me the only way to understand it is to show you in words what I've seen with my own eyes. Poems like this are fun to write, and easier than most. It is just a translation...nature in translation you could say and that is exciting. Almost like a collection of images, but those images are in you, the reader. How good this poem may or may not be is left to you to imagine...



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Imagine your mind in this place
Let it echo in your skull
Let it chisel its way through worries to calmness
Let it fasten onto your bones and sinew
Carry you through the night
Rip you from your mind
Set you on a wayward flight

In darkness IMAGINE

…whispers of night talkers talking to you
And listen up good fellow
Know in those words are more than hollow truths
Go where they may lead you
Go from your cold tent into the night breathing like some great beast
Let the sweet, sour fragrance wash over you
Of dead and dying flowers, of life gone by this summer’s bright hour
Of the beginnings of fall and the awakened night’s calls
Let them wrestle you from your worries beating in your ears
Like sweet apple pie you gobble up those fears
A rustled bush
A shadow cast with a ghoulish mask
A tree forming and reforming into a million shapes
A waving branch like evil spirits flying capes
A faraway sound a creature sure to smite you
But nothing but the night
Nothing but its wisdom in the air to delight

Under stars IMAGINE

…yourself encased beneath this open sky
A man with eyes as big as saucer cups, fascinated by
The face of Universe
The face of everything
The face you forgot about, only now remembered

In arms of nature IMAGINE

…warm wind mixed with cold
that does not shelter you from time sweeping swiftly by
or the gentle night you hungered for
that brought you out of shelter to see and know
that curiosity is a blessing, like a seed grown into a flower
something you didn't realize as beautiful
until you witnessed it with your own eyes
the buzzing, bountiful petri dish of life you slumbered in
the peeking, leering eyes
a blooming rose, grey in the moonlight

In this wilderness hour IMAGINE

…a dawning sun's gritty eyes awakening above valley fog
to shead light and morning like a broom
sweeping hillside and lakeshore, city building and muddied moor
sweeping glacier carvings of hip and thigh
of natures form and body
Sweeping sleeping boulders some giant must've cast
into forest and lake, valley and stream
seemingly everywhere this sun swept
across meadows, rivers, forests
across everything you have yet to know
In the hours and hours still to come
left to imagine…