Single Engine Reverie
Maybe it’s the weather
Gun metal clouds over dark streets:
I hear single-engine planes
From the small-town airport nearby
As they drone, struggle
To lift off and think I am once more
In Sitka where the stretch of the harbor
Up towards Halibut Point
Suffices as glass-water runway.
One plane heads south
Pontoons splintering glass
breaking silently over anemone
Sea urchin, snapper and rock cod
Even halibut undulating
Twenty feet or more below
From where the Cessna at last breaks free
Water tension
No longer stubborn, releasing the bird
Like the eagles below
Preening on the rocks of Crescent Harbor
Like the artist with her chisel
Carving at Totem Park, like even a musician
A poet or two scattered about, all of them like me
Yearning to take off.
Sitka
Rests where the Tlingit people
So much earlier proclaimed this place Sheetʼká.
Carved canoes and totems on the shoreline looked
On gray water and those spruce blankets
Flowing up into the clouds.
Now people want to pretend
That this place is simply forest friendly,
That brown bear do not come to the edge of town
To take dogs off of outside chains while
The owners are shopping.
Here slate waters
Hide rocks covering and uncovering,
Those rocks that the Tlingit say have a habit
Of moving. They should know: it’s still their place—
Rain forest, tidal flow, alpine height.
Perhaps we are kidding ourselves.
This place inoculates us with its beauty
Of eagles resting on the rocks of Crescent Harbor
Or the green iridescent hush of Devil’s Club
And Sword Fern along Indian River.
With such beauty, how can you
Drown in winter in less than fifteen minutes?
One did, working a barge in tow. While teaching I cannot
Erase my vision of a tidal rip, the man tossed loose,
The bight of a cable sweeping him away.
Inside a heated classroom I persist,
Teach Eliot and often N. Scott Momaday
To serious locals who tell me about their childhood
With ‘No Indian’ signs, the man flipped in the froth
Never to rise in this somnolent space.
Perhaps… Still I drink Indian River water
That clear brew that draws you back into the thrall
Of this place. The island rests in an archipelago of the mind,
Water laps the hull of my being as decades later
I try on a memory or two.
Standing at the Barrier
Find charity
in place of polished barrels free of dirt.
Place roses
in the gaping muzzle maw. Rip off the masks,
Resolve to lift up reason
Beyond the reach of tribal hate.
Demands
of clan eschew. Forgo those
Ceremonials
of blood-lust glitter strewn upon the screen.
Think instead
of hands on prison bars,
Of disappearing names
drifting out of reach.
Let’s climb
whatever ladder we can find
That reaches
up towards heaven.
Turn
to where the Love is.
Make peace
one’s daily prayer.
Resist:
obliterate despair.
A Lamentation for the Eradication of USAID
Timothy Ridge Farm
At the spring,
the beggar bends to let sweet water
fill his bucket.
Striding up the hill
muscles loose, arms full of garden glory
for the tabletop
This supplicant sees instead
the bone-thin arms of children, hunger’s sullen stare
its swollen gut.
Hear his cry. It pierces
like the wailing of a woman at the gate.
It fabricates
The hollow sound
of cisterns dry, of storehouses
swept clean.
When he calls out
his breath is a clatter of bleached bones.
When he grieves
His eyes are mounds
of raw earth resurrected, heaped from the digging
of fresh graves.
Eating the Muskeg
After Reading O. Wayne Robuck’s Guide: The Common Plants of the Muskegs
of Southeastern Alaska
The coiled fiddleheads
Of Western Bracken you can eat.
Boil thirty minutes changing water
Twice and cover with cream.
To get slightly high
Chew the stems of Clubmoss or take
The spore powder for nosebleeds or fresh
Wounds but not too much.
I like the inner bark
Of Western Hemlock or a clutch
Of needles steeped in hot water
For fresh tea.
The berries
Of Bog Cranberry well cooked
Serve for jam, jelly, also to purify
Blood or quiet gut unrest.
Finally, roots of Skunk Cabbage
Roasted and dried may be ground into flour;
These also are fine for bronchial congestion, hay fever
Even whooping cough.
So get out there.
Wade into the clutch of mud, the clever
Tangle of fecundity waiting for your boots
Your hands and health, your next meal.