The Melancholy Dane

It's not safe to fall asleep on the couch at our house. You might wake up to find something like this sitting atop you.


He seems strangely pensive.

"I just can't decide... Ketchup? Or barbecue sauce?"
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Wind-drunk

No, I tell you, it's the wind made me drunk--
lifted, spun me, filled my pores
like wine in so many cups. Like
a path leading out of sight through the sharp
green smell of mountain firs. Like a bowl
of bronze humming as it's stroked
around the rim.

The world's full of drunkenness
and rowdy singers staggering late at night
toward home, or away, it hardly matters
because they relish the stink of alleys
as much as jasmine perfume. To the sacred,
all is sacred.

But I was telling you about the wind
that pelted us with acorns. I was telling you
how moths leave a sweet smell
when they're crushed. I was telling you
that summer refused to yield
even a trace of ash.

I'll let go of your jacket now.
I have to go
drink some more.

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Truth or Fiction

I have another guest post up at Write Anything.

Fall came overnight: last night we woke up to the sound of rain, and this morning the air is cool, damp, and blustery. Wet leaves blowing around sound completely different than dry leaves: I never noticed that before. Meanwhile the Bad Kitten, whom we've barely seen all summer, has suddenly decided that the warm, dry house is a better place to be than the chilly, soggy shrubbery around the block.

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Red Light Blues

I was standing on the corner, heard a radio play the blues
Standing on a corner, car radio played the blues
I got holes in my pockets, got no socks inside my shoes.

I heard the radio play, the music was sad and sweet
Heard the radio play, I was sad but it sounded sweet
Forgot my empty pockets, forgot about my aching feet.

The driver he looked at me, I thought I saw him smile
Yes, the driver looked at me and I swear I saw him smile
"Well, the music is free, go on and listen for a while."

The stoplight it turned green and the driver pulled away
Yes, the light it turned to green and the blues man drove away
And I thought my heart would break 'cause the music would not stay.

Walking away in the dark with my shoes flapping on my feet
Walking away in the dark and I curse my blistered feet
Starving to death in the city, ain't no music on the street.

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Norwegian Brothers

Deep in the darkest Arctic reaches
where icy windrows clog the beaches
lived a band of merry Nordic thieves
--Olaf, Knut, Sigurd, and Lief.
These were their names. There were no others
among this band of Norwegian brothers.
They fled from justice to far fjords,
their cargo, canned soup and Viking swords.
They hoisted up over slopes of scree
and rappelled down to a frozen sea!
The law was distant. Escape seemed near.
The brothers hoped for life without fear
on a distant strand where sunlight ebbed
like retreating tides. But the prints of webbed
toes dug into the soggy sands
revealed the presence of other bands:
frogmen-robbers under the midnight sun!
A battle was lost, a treasure won.
The mysterious fate remains unheard
--of Olaf, Knut, Lief, and Sigurd.

Another word salad poem. Something about these characters intrigues me...

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OPA Fall Conference

Coming up soon...

"OPA!" dancers shout.
Poets gather like ravens
on Kah-Nee-Ta's pines!

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Pat Hodgell's new Kencyrath novel

Honor's Paradox is coming out in December. We got to see an uncorrected proof. It includes several stanzas from "Massacre at Gothregor."

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Season of Wine and Rust

This is the season that tames the dust
into sedate soil, damp with rain.
This is the season of wine and rust,

clouds gathering like a spreading stain
while grass seeds fall and drive pointed awns
into sedate soil. Damp with rain,

weeds nod heavy over shriveled lawns.
Cats pick broomstraw burrs from their coats
while grass seeds fall and drive pointed awns,

harpoons thrown from vegetable boats
at earthworms rising like breaching whales.
Cats pick broomstraw burrs from their coats,

polish their whiskers, sleek down their tails,
dreaming of spring when young songbirds fly
at earthworms rising like breaching whales.

This season quenches the burning sky,
this is the season that tames the dust
dreaming of spring when young songbirds fly.
This is the season of wine and rust.

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This is very nice...

A student in music composition and piano performance, at Chapman University, has asked if he can use "Sestina, Inspired by Rumi" as the text to compose a song to, for his senior project.

Of course I said yes. What poet could refuse?

He'll send me a recording some time in the spring. Steve Perry has set a couple of my poems to music before. Maybe someday there'll be an album.

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Rocky Butte

Equinox is only a week away. The shortening from day to day is noticeable. Clouds from the west have replaced the smoke, and temperatures are falling.

Saturday I walked up the north end of Rocky Butte and down the south end. There's a tunnel on the south side, a little 180-degree corkscrew like a hairpin bend flipped over on itself. On the eastern shoulder is a neighborhood of homes perched on dizzily steep slopes, peering out towards Troutdale and Gresham.

The sun was orange; the air was still, and unseasonably hot. The hill is crowned by a small park, a stone wall ringing a plaza and some shrubbery, breached in a couple of places by flights of steps. It was too smoky to see the mountains, but I can only guess that Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Adams would be visible as well as Mt. Hood. If I were organizing a Portland version of Plein Air, that would be one of the spots I'd pick.

What other places? The Zoo and the Arboretum. The Japanese Garden, the Chinese Garden, Waterfront Park and the Esplanade. The Rhodo Gardens at Crystal Springs. There must be good locations on Mt. Tabor. Private homes along the Alameda Ridge, if homeowners would agree to it. Sacramento overlooking Rose City golf course. Fern Hill Park, out by the old Whitaker site. Leach Botanical Garden. The new plaza and fountain at PSU, on the site of the old Mill St. building. Heck, some of the OHSU buildings have million-dollar views...

I just volunteered to serve on the board of the Oregon Poetry Association, through at least April, replacing a board member who's had to resign for health reasons. Then I have the option to run in the general election. Hmmm...

The Plein Air anthology should be out some time in October: I'll post the link, and the 5th Plein Air poem, at that time.

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The Poetry Society of Michigan

gave me a second place in the Sonnet category for "Ruby-Throat" and an honorable mention in the Nature category for "Upstream" in their fall contest. Both poems will appear in the fall issue of Peninsula Poets.

In other news, Science Poetry including "Truffle Shuffle" has gone to press; Pirene Fountain's Japan anthology including "Stranded" is in proofing.

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At Dawn on Broadway

westbound cars carry
orange highlights on bumpers
as if fleeing fire

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Advice from One Romantic to Another

They think you have to suffer for your art,
to make it great. You need to sob out loud,
to rip the vessels from the bleeding heart
they think you have. To suffer for your art
is de rigeur. So play the starving part
and milk the pity oozing from the crowd.
They think you have to suffer. For your art
to make it big, you need to sell it loud!

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To the Sax Player at Waterfront Park-- 9/7/2011

You were the perfect soundtrack
for wading barefoot on brick, in fountain water. Mood music:
does that diminish you? Would you prefer
the spotlight at Dante's or the Roseland, swaying crowds
sucking on your brass? Of course you would,
who wouldn't? Artists know these things.

Well. If you don't make it someday
I believe it won't be for lack of effort.
Mellow brass and well-worn keys attest
to hours of practice. Yeah. You could be the best.

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Now, You Don't

This morning, in a doubled flash of sun:
from black glass windows on the Coliseum's
front; from elevators outside one
grey concrete parking structure; now, you see 'em
said a voice of orange light and steel.
Some harbinger of metro-revelation
helicopter-hovered to reveal
a secret hidden at the light rail station,
sunk in gleaming copper rails or hung
from metal trusses. Glass-roofed shelters framed
a view of urban vistas. Call it tame,
this metal wilderness? On every rung
of ladders left to stand against a wall
a bucket balances before a fall.

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One Green Square

One farm among those that fill this valley
with apples, cherries, lavender,
flowers of every hue.
One square in an Afghan of many-shaded green
laid in the lap of Mt. Hood
with the river flashing through it
like a silver crochet hook.

Once, this valley was a river of fire
now hardened to stone.
Once it was ripped open by floods the size of mountains
now, bathed in the smiles of tolerant glaciers.

These flowers cover ancient scars.
These fruits grow from the bones
of old catastrophes.

I want to gather them by the bucketful.
I want to carry the seeds
to every battleground of the new century.
I want to turn each killing field
into one green square.

Plein Air, The Gorge White House, Hood River
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Ash

That east wind is brutal. Hot, dusty
reeking of smoke. Dead leaves
race along the westbound streets.
The tail end of summer is curled up
and burning in the hills. Sheets of smoke flap
across the sky. Pigeons rise
in short troubled arcs. Auguries are poor.
Pray for the firefighters. Pray for rain.
My skin is freckled with ash.

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