English Poems

The sour smell,
blue stain,
water squirts out round the wedge,

He crawls to the edge of the foaming creek
He backs up the slab ledge
He puts a finger in the water
He turns to a trapped pool
Puts both hands in the water
Puts one foot in the pool
Drops pebbles in the pool
He slaps the water surface with both hands
He cries out, rises up and stands
Facing toward the torrent and the mountain
Raises up both hands and shouts three times!

VI 69, Kai at Sawmill Lake

Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.

I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.

Out there walking round, looking out for food,
a rootstock, a birdcall, a seed that you can crack
plucking, digging, snaring, snagging,
barely getting by,

no food out there on dusty slopes of scree —
carry some — look for some,
go for a hungry dream.
Deer bone, Dall sheep,
bones hunger home.

Out there somewhere
a shrine for the old ones,
the dust of the old bones,
old songs and tales.

Old Woman Nature
naturally has a bag of bones
tucked away somewhere.
a whole room full of bones!

A scattering of hair and cartilage
bits in the woods.

A fox scat with hair and a tooth in it.
a shellmound
a bone flake in a streambank.

A purring cat, crunching
the mouse head first,
eating on down toward the tail--

I’ m wondering where you are now
Married, or mad, or free:
Wherever you are you’ re likely glad,
But memory troubles me.

We could’ ve had us children,
We could’ ve had a home —
But you thought not, and I thought not,
And these nine years we roam.

Today I worked in the deep dark tanks,
And climbed out to watch the sea:
Gulls and salty waves pass by,
And mountains of Araby.

Washing Kai in the sauna,
The kerosene lantern set on a box
outside the ground-level window,
Lights up the edge of the iron stove and the
washtub down on the slab
Steaming air and crackle of waterdrops
brushed by on the pile of rocks on top
He stands in warm water
Soap all over the smooth of his thigh and stomach
“Gary don’ t soap my hair!”

HOLLYWOOD

From raindrenched Homeland into a well: the upturned animal
was mine by law and outside the tunnel, him again!
Everywhere I turned the children ran between. “Loose dogs!”
he roared. I remember one sequence: a gulf in his thinking
meant swim as fast as you can. But it was winter and the water
was closed. The mouths of the children were sealed with ice.

There is no Rescue Mission where it isn’ t freezing
from the need that created it. The lost children

distill to pure chemical. Where Good is called No-Tone
it’ s the one who cries out who doesn’ t get a coat.

The children fuse colors because they don’ t want to
separate. Daughters shot off of hydrants who cut

each other in the neck and gut, don’ t care
which one of them will end up later in surgery.