I am sitting out on the bench in our yard. Mt. Jefferson is wrapped in a smoky haze from some distant wildfire, giving its contours a soft, floating look. There is still snow on much of its slopes, curving in and out of the dips and falls of its immense girth. Tomorrow I return to Los Angeles. All of a sudden I am not ready to go. Last night, when I was tossing and turning and imagining strange things that go bump in the night, I was more than ready to get back to the city, to husband and friends, to leave this more solitary existence behind. But today, as I sit in the shade of the Ponderosas and listen to the birds chirp and twitter, the grasshopper’s cackle and even the saws and hammers of the construction work across the meadow, I hesitate, realize that I have only just begun to settle in to the rhythms of this place and want more time to absorb it and be absorbed by it.Having two homes is a new experience for me. It is both expansive and confusing. Each place offers so much of what I love and neither is complete in all those things. In Oregon is the solitude, the quiet, time to find my own pace. Here I notice more, my dreams grow larger, my thoughts slow. Here, the earth and sky, the wind and rain, coyote howl and hoot of the owl touch my primitive soul, calling up great longing, as well as the terror of complete vulnerability to the wild, the vast.

Right now a band of quail is bobbing across the grass, a mother hen and her three adolescent chicks. They move away from where I am sitting and are joined by more hens and chicks as they make their way to a woodpile and safe cover. This dodging between exposure and safety, I believe, is embedded in a kind of primal survival pocket deep inside our brains. In love, business, friendship, and art, in mind, body and spirit there is a kind of calculation that goes on: How much can I risk here? What might the cost be? Who will I be if I do this? Who will I be if I don’t?

I don’t want to huddle in the woodpile of my comfort, crouching there in the dark cover, fearing the coyote or the badger, but so often when I am on the verge of change it is where I find myself seeking refuge, feverishly doubting my ability to navigate the wide open spaces of what is calling me over the horizon.

Yesterday, out the window, I watched as flycatchers dodged and swooped to snap up grasshoppers and darting insects. Their agility and acuity had no forethought. They had never taken a workshop or had a mentor to school them in the right moves to make or not make. They were born to it and knew it to be the way of their survival. I believe that under all the things we have learned there is, for each of us, as for the quail, the coyote, and flycatcher, an innate knowing of how we are meant to move in this world–our natural rhythm, where our heart, our head and our soul converge and we move across the fields and rivers of our life in harmony, not fearing the perils, but welcoming them as a vital part of the journey.

Even as I prepare in these next two days to leave one part of this earth and fly to another I will still carry with me the scent of the pines, the touch of the breeze on my shoulder, the call of the flicker and the nuthatch in the chill morning. And if I emerge from the dark of my doubt (and I will) and out into the wide open spaces of possibility, I know I will know that there is no coming or going, no here or there, no now or then anywhere but in my mind. I will know in that place of convergence inside of me, that all that exists is memory–a vivid, radiant, undying memory–of how courageously we have lived and how well we have loved.

*************

The quail family

The smoky Cascades

Caught

The buck startles over the fence past
the house and I run from window
to window to see where he has gone,

if he is still near. I haven’t been out
to the meadow in the five days since
I arrived and deny I am frightened now

that the neighbor says a family of coyotes
have a den in the brush. I want to see
them like a movie on the big screen,

like the Discovery channel in my own
backyard, like how I watch the chipmunks
this afternoon, laugh at what is play to me

but might very well be war, with their tails
switching and chasing and tumbling and
I start to think that cutting the grass

yesterday might have left them easy prey
to owls or the mother coyote and how
there is no birdseed in the feeder and I want

desperately to see again the trees near
the stream, felled and gnawed by a beaver,
want to rest my head there on the damp

ground and wait for the insects to come,
the geese to touch down, for night,
to not bolt, to stay, to be rooted like

rabbit, like deer, bear and wolf, to know
what the hunted know and still to call
forth the breath, the will, the morning.

Hari Bhajan

August, 2006

In the last week I’ve watched, let’s see, four movies on DVD. That’s a lot more than I would normally do in a week’s span but I’m not at home and am indulging myself, getting caught up on my list. I brought two Netflix movies from home; Transamerica and Vera Drake, both of which I liked, especially Transamerica. The acting in both was superb and there were no flashy actors or big production scenes, very much story and character driven. Last night I watched The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada with Tommy Lee Jones. Whew, that was intense and sometimes funny and what was so wonderful was how the two main characters influenced each other and changed each other during their odyssey across the Texas/Mexico desert. Just now I finished watch Duma, a movie about a young boy, a cheetah and an African man all finding their way home, with wonderful scenes of Africa and super music. It’s funny how three of the four movies involve traveling long distances–the hero’s journey, facing hardships and conquering fear and finding friendship and love and acceptance and yet do it so differently and deftly.

Movies have always been a source of inspiration and emotional revelation for me and when I wrote my MOVIES I LOVE list it was amazing to see how many showed up on that list. I know there are still even more that will come to mind and be added as time goes on. It is not easy to get films made these days (was it ever?) and I have the utmost respect for those artists who endeavor to make a film that awakens the viewer to themselves, to history, to cultures and civilizations, to alternate paradigms of perception and that seek to open the heart and further peace.

One good source for great movies that you may never see in a theater is the Spiritual Cinema Circle, a subscripiton based movie-a-month club. There are feature length films, as well as shorts and animated films. I’m always looking for good movies so email me with any recommendations you might have.

Yesterday I took my first walk out into the woods, a familiar path that starts across the paved road from our house here in Sisters and within fifteen minutes intersects with a dirt road that winds back around to the pavement again. Just as I reached the dirt road a blue bird flew by me. I don’t know if it was a “bluebird” or a bird that was blue, but I had to follow it. I had my camera and I wanted a picture to take back and try to identify it in my bird book. The bird wasn’t co-operating, however, and just when I would have the camera set up to take a shot, would flit off another twenty feet further into the forest. I followed it, kept my eyes up to keep track of its whereabouts, so camouflaged against the smokey sky. After a few more minutes the bird disappeared and I sat down on a large log to get my bearings and to just be there quietly for a few minutes.

The snag was right in front of me, just a few yards away. The only dead tree still standing in the area. The beauty of it caught be off guard. After all, there were all the majestic living pines all around it. Maybe it was because it was the first day I felt really present and here in this place. Maybe it was because the blue bird had led me to it. It’s hard to say, but I had to come close, to walk around it, feel its rough and smooth skin, peer inside its hollowed belly, where I imagines so many creatures had bedded or foraged or hid from predators. From all angles it was stunning in the symmetry of its form, more majestic than an Olympic torch, more sacred than an altar candle. All around were the bodies of other trees, much larger trees than the live ones that grew around them. I imagined them still alive, the elders, giants of the forest, with a thousand rings in their trunks. I felt deep sorrow in that moment. I felt regret. I would have liked to have seen these aged ones. It was also a sorrow for my own ignorance–for how little I know of the forest and how it has been changed–what once was, what will never be again. In art, in poetry, in story and song is the opportunity to bring the spirit of what we can never fully replicate, what has forever passed, into a form that passes it on, gives it an afterlife. The blue bird, the graying stumps, the snag–I thank you for the moment and the blessings.

***********

The Snag

Splintered,
chiseled bits
list into, sift
into silt,
while it
lifts still
its kindled
spike,
its withered
tindered whirl,
to ink,
the insistent,
the invisible
firmament.

Hari Bhajan

8/19/06

************

Here are some disparate things that are bobbing around in my head that may, or may not, have any relationship to each other: Seamus Heaney’s poetry, the love my parents have for each other, chipmunks, planning to eat what’s best for me and eating something entirely different and, and the clock ticking, ticking.

It’s amazing how many thoughts one mind can circulate in a given hour. I can watch the chipmunks in the yard scramble up and down the trees, chase each other and whip their striped tails up and down while talking with my husband on the phone about signing a new lease at the office, how much the increase will be and whether we should commit to two or three years, all the while thinking it’s time to eat breakfast and I’m kinda cold so really don’t want my protein drink—oatmeal sounds good—I could throw some almonds, raisins and blueberries in and that would be healthy. And, that’s just the start–who knows how many other random images and emotions flitted through my mind’s twisting caverns during those few minutes? Who knows?

I’m here in Oregon to write and to work on organizing some of the pieces I have written in the last couple of years in the e-letter to see if there is a possible book in such a compilation. This is the first quiet day so far this week. I just got back from the spa—hot tub, sauna and massage—and am beginning to feel human after jetting down here and then spending three days with my mom, one of which was driving her over the pass from here to Portland (3 hours one way) and then coming back in the same day. We visited Dad, who is currently in a nursing facility due to health issues. They are so sweet together—Mom gives Dad a hug and then turns to me and says, “I have to kiss him five times,” and they proceed to kiss gently on the lips. He is shocked to hear she was gone for only three days. “It seemed like a year,” he said. They just celebrated their 62nd wedding anniversary, each at the age of 85.

Mom & Dad–with his Univ. of Oregon blanket!

That leaves me two more subjects to cover: Seamus Heaney’s poetry and time ticking, which is relatively easy as I’ve been reading poems from Heaney’s latest collection, District and Circle and am in awe, once again at his ability to craft language in such a way that evokes 3D images of the places, the things and the people that he portrays. He brings a living history to his poems and that history is seen through relationships—how the work we do, the families we are born into, the country, county and village we live in and the values we hold dear shape us and give us a place in the continuum. I think this is what I am dealing with in the slippage of time—can I establish the place that is mine in history? Is there still time? Can I be patient? Or, could it be true that it exists right now and it is only my lack of visual acuity keeping me from seeing it? Ah, mystery and mastery—two such valiant and powerful knights. They are who I must contend with and they have no concept of what is or was or will be. These two speak only the language of the eternal now, allowing for clarity and uncertainty to co-exist, for paradox and poetry to dance together and to dispel any notion that we either live or die. We simply are.

Poem by Seamus Heaney
District and Circle
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Publishers

A Shiver

The way you had to stand to swing the sledge,
Your two knees locked, your lower back shock-fast
As shields in a testudo, spine and waist
A pivot for the tight-braced, tilting rib-cage;
The way its iron head planted the sledge
Unyieldingly as a club-footed last;
The way you had to heft and then half-rest
Its gathered force like a long-nursed rage
About to be let fly: does it do you good
To have known it in your bones, directable,
Withholdable at will,
A first blow that could make air of a wall,
A last one so unanswerably landed
The staked earth quailed and shivered in the handle?

Yesterday was the monthly meeting of the Poets 4–a group of four poets (myself being one) who have been getting together now since February to share our poems, process, books, ideas, workshop experiences, and whatever else has any relevance to poetry. We’re all working at a similar level with our poetry endeavors and love to bounce all sorts of questions, musings and frustrations off each other. I met Barbara first at a workshop we attended in L.A. and then we took a UCLA Intermediate Poetry class with Laurel Ann Bogan in the winter where we met Nancy and then we both went to the Idyllwild Summer Poetry in 2004, where we met Mary. This past winter I was feeling the need to be in a group (didn’t have one at the time) and so was Barbara so we called the other two and thus began our Poets 4 monthly soirees.

************

Barbara, who doubles as an incredible artist

Nancy, who hosted us this month.

Mary, focusing intently on the feedback

************

We all marvel at how much we enjoy each other’s company and sharing our triumphs and travails with writing, revising, submitting and reading, reading, reading poetry. We bring books of poetry, CDs of readings, handouts from workshops we’ve attended, and of course, our latest poems to share and get feedback on. We feel comfortable with each other, safe to express our opinions, to get it wrong, to take risks and to give or receive support when we are struggling–and believe me, we have all struggled. We get together on Saturday mornings at one of our houses from 10 to about 1, then we have lunch together, either heading out to a restaurant or enjoying a casual “at home” affair. The time always flies and we wish it was longer–I know I do.

Community for me is key in any endeavor I undertake and it is no different with poetry. The creation of poetry is generally done in solitude (although it can be done collaboratively), I believe having various levels of community that can be both sounding board and moral support is crucial in keeping perspective on what matters most in life and in poetry. I feel very grateful to have Mary, Barbara and Nancy as dear friends and fellow poeteers. I am also blessed to have an extended community through many of the wonderful poets I have met in the last few years at Squaw Valley, Napa Valley, Idyllwild, and the other workshops and events I have participated in. Poems are great things–but without the men and women who sit down and write them, who turn their thoughts, observations, longings and griefs into words on the page…well, now, to my mind, those amazing people are the true works of art.

Food, books, poems—they all mix together in blissful harmony.

Me, Barbara & Mary–Nancy had to take the picture!

Because I just wrote a whole post on the tree in my backyard

and how it was trimmed by the gardeners yesterday

to look like a 4-year-old with a bad haircut

and how the tree looked embarrassed

and had lost the proud stance it has taken

as king of the backyard

and how it made me sad to see it that way…

And because I wrote all of this

and inserted pictures of said tree

and wound it all up with a very

cosmic connection between myself

and the tree and the power

to regenerate and to go on in spite

of life’s cruel twists…well,

because I hit the save button

and got a box that popped up

saying Sorry, we have to close

this program now.

An Error has occurred.

If you were in the middle

of something the information

may have been lost.

And it was.

Because of all this and the hour spent on it and the reluctance to recall it in all its glory,

I’m moving on…

…..

To talk about a new book I ordered from Amazon, an anthology, called The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry. I don’t know how I missed this gem. It’s been out since 2005. It’s different from a lot of anthologies in that there is a photo of each poet with a short paragraph about their publications, and then two to five pages of poems. I like putting a face with the name. There are almost ninety poets represented, including many of my favorites (Tony Hoagland, Sharon Olds, Naomi Shihab Nye, Li-Young Lee, Jane Hirshfield, Gerald Stern, Linda Pastan), as well as names completely new to me (Natasha Trethewey, Ruth L. Schwartz, Jack Myers, D. Nurkse).

It’s really a wonderful sampler and so far I like the poem selections the editor, Sue Ellen Thompson, has made. She says in the introduction to the volume that the primary criteria in selecting the poems was that they present one or more of the following: “a compelling narrative, the inventive use of language, and arresting image, or its ability to trigger a profound emotional response.”

Here’s a poem by Hayden Carruth that fits the bill:

I, I, I

First, the self. Then, the observing self.
The self that acts and the self that watches. This
The starting point, the place where the mind begins,
Whether the mind of an individual or
The mind of a species. When I was a boy
I struggled to understand. For if I know
The self that watches, another watching self
Must see the watcher, then another seeing that,
Another and another, and where does it end?
And my mother sent me to the barber shop,
My first time, to get my hair “cut for a part”
(Instead of the dutch boy she’d always given me),
As I was instructed to tell the barber. She
Dispatched me on my own because the shop,
Which had a pool table in the back, in that
Small town was the men’s club, and no woman
Would venture there. Was it my first excursion
On my own into the world? Perhaps. I sat
In the big chair. The wall behind me held
A huge mirror, and so did the one in front,
So that I saw my own small strange blond head
With its oriental eyes and turned up nose repeated
In ever diminishing images, one behind
Another behind another, and I tried
To peer farther and farther in the succession
To see the farthest one, diminutive in
The shadows. I could not. I sat rigid
And said no word. The fat barber snipped
My hair and blew his brusque breath on my nape
And finally whisked away his sheet, and I
Climbed down. I ran from that cave of mirrors
A mile and a half to home, to my own room
Up under the eaves, which was another cave.
It had no mirrors. I no longer needed mirrors.

Hayden Carruth
The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary Poetry
Edited by Sue Ellen Thompson
Autumn House Press, Publisher

I know I said I wouldn’t write anymore about SV, but I found some more pics that had gotten lost in all the downloading and wanted to get them up and well, frankly, I’m just not quite sure I’m through with the experience. I haven’t spent much time with the poems I wrote there since I got back. I definitely need some distance from them to let them cool out in the root cellar until they’re ripe and ready to be picked, peeled and carved into the real deal. I also have an assignment, a kind of quest if you will, so kindly suggested to me by Sharon Olds in my workshop with her on that last Friday. I need to dig deeper into a subject from a poem I brought on that day and it is a really tough one. I think I need a hypnotist to get to the root of it and even then, not sure it will completely reveal itself. Poetry can be like that…take you out on an emotional limb and then leave you there to think about how cold and lonely and scary the world can be. It’s gratifying to know you can climb out there on that skinny little twig but the truth is that jumping from there into the void is really what you’re being asked to do and that is downright TERRIFYING!! Well, the gauntlet has been thrown down and I have taken it up and will keep at it until the little devil surfaces and, if I’m very lucky, I can capture it, put it down on the page and make something out of it besides a lotta misery.

I know this all sounds very cryptic but that’s the way it will have to be because I’m hanging out here on that limb and to reveal too much is to stir the winds and get the whole tree swaying like crazy. I’m guessing you have some idea about what I mean. We’ve all had those times when you either walk into the fire or go home with your tail between your legs. I’ve done too much of the latter in my lifetime and have been determined the last few years to always accept the challenge and find out where it takes me. Unfailingly, it’s to a place of elevation and awareness.
Enjoy the photos….

*************

David Lukas with telescope, binoculars, water, sunscreen, and assorted other necessities of the naturalist.

The Pines

The Aspens

*************

Poem by Stewart Mintzer
Wandering poet and dear friend

Nature Walk

The wing’s composed of many wings.
Each feather’s a wing. Flap hard and you’ll rise,
but to go forward you need some torque,

the invitation of the easy bend
to fly exquisitely contained.
Don’t look down, trust the body to know the way,
the groove of hush before the storm.

Give up being right.
Earth a web of fused connectors.
When one part’s sick, the others know it,
moist attention shifts to love the wound.
Roots of all stories underground, breathe up the middle

numinous granite, lava, ant prayers, untouched shade.
The whole ecosystem stops what it’s doing
to whisper you home. Create a flamboyant display
and pollinators come like reservoired servants of spread.
Jeffrey Pine blue green needles basal sheaths
cone scales stiff flat curved trunk bark firm vanilla
odored when one’s nose is pressed into deep furrow.
A woman kisses bark, my lips are right behind.

If you’re gonna live a long time you better get
a long term strategy. Birds sing because they love it.
Clarks Nutcrackers only eat one third of the seeds
they gather. They’re the dominant forest planter
in the Northern Hemisphere. They sing
I want a forest      here
and              here

and                          here

and

here
*************

Sarah & Lori in the Great Room at the Olympic Lodge. In the background is the Squaw Valley Wall of Fame.

Brett Hall Jones–She and Lisa and Kaitlin run the show–and run it with a lot of love & fun!

Loading the plates at the picnic.

Blissing out on poetry.

Enjoying hearing poems together.

On the last night it’s a tradition for the SV poets to gather at the home of Oakley and Barbara Hall, the founders of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. There are about 80 of US all together and I’m amazed at how they manage to come up with all the tables and chairs that fill their living room, dining room and two large decks. There is a huge vat of curry on the stove (in a very tiny kitchen) and quesadillas being made on the spot, fruit and veggie salad, asparagus, sodas and wine and bread. The food is wonderful and the conversation lively.

The kitchen is buzzing. The quesadillas were hot off the grill and delicisioso! (yeah, I know that’s not an official word-but poetic license is in order when it comes to describing food).

***

Christine (wacky, wonderful roommate), David (fellow blogger) & Dean Young (love those pearly button shirts)

***

Sarah (dear poet mentor), Billie (need a hex or a blessing she’s your gal) & Alex (high school teacher in NY that any kid would love to have as their teacher)

***

Larry (love the shirt) and Jo (awesome first basewoman)

***

Chauncy (wrote his first love poem at SV) and Bryan (zen poet of Chico)

*****
The best part of the evening is after dinner one of the tables is folded away, we all gather ’round the fireplace and it’s time for anyone who wants to go for it to stand and recite a poem by heart. Frost, Yeats, Eliot, and of course, Dickins0n, were all honored, alongwith many others. Even I got up and spoke three short lines from a poem by Muriel Rukeyser that someone had sent me a couple of weeks before in an email: “Say it! Say it! / The universe is made of stories / not atoms.” I needed something really simple because memorizing does not come easy to me. I so envied some of the poets there who had several poems they could pull out of their pockets. I find the recitation of poems moving. I think of families or clans, people throughout time gathering around a fire or in the parlor or a small theater to tell stories, to chant and speak from the heart, to remember the elders, and to touch the essence of who we are as spirits, not bodies or minds, but visitors, bringing what we can to humankind.

Front row seats on the stone fireplace.

I don’t remember what Dean recited but this must have been a moment of high anxiety.

Liza read something long and, obviously, thought provoking.

C.D.: I think she did a cowboy song. She is a southerner.

Stephen with his Eliot recitation, complete with gestures and credible imitation!

Arlene expressing poetry through her beautiful dance.

Had to end with Sharon, who sang us a song–sweet, sad and full of all that’s Sharon.

On that note I’ll end this post with a favorite poem of Sharon’s and a huge THANK YOU again to all the folks at Squaw Valley Community of Writers. Until we meet again…

by Sharon Olds
from The Unswept Room

Kindergarten Abecedarian

I thought what I had to do was to read
the very long word, over the chalkboard,
ab-kedev-gi-hij-klem-nop-qurs-
tuv-wix-yiz, but what I had to do
was to look at a crescent moon-shape and to go
k k k k with my mind. It was strange,
like other things–that a very large Boy owned everything,
even a fire, where he could put me for the thoughts
in my head. Each day, I tried to read
the world, to find his name in it,
the trees bending in cursive, the bees
looping their sky script. Crescent moon
was k-k-k. Cereal bowl
uh-uh-uh. Cap-gun puh-
puh-puh. K-k, uh-uh, puh-puh,
kk-uhh-puhh, kk-uhh-puhh–
cup. Would God be mad? I had made
a false cup, in my mind, and although
he had made my mind, and owned it, maybe this was
not his cup, maybe he could not
put this cup in hell, and make it
scream the cup-scream. Maybe the paper
world was ours, as the actual one was his–
I was becoming a reader. For a moment I almost remember it,
when I stood back, on the other side
of the alphabet, a-b-c-d-
e-f-g, and took that first
step in, h-i-j-k
l-m-n-o-p, and stood astride
the line of the border of literacy,
q-r-s, t-u-v,
I would work for a life of this, I would ask
sanctuary: w-x-y-z.

One of the highlights of a week at SV Poetry are the early morning nature walks on Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday with David Lukas, a naturalist, writer and cosmic earth guy. David has spent months in the Arizona desert living on what he could find there, hiking and camping in Borneo for a year and countless days, months and years roaming the Sierra Nevada. The “walks” are more like strolls with multiple stops along the way to pull out the telescope, zoom in on a squirrel perched on a rock sounding out an alarm or to turn over a leaf where ants are busy herding and milking aphids or to discuss the lava and granite rock formations or the “batholith,” the mass of rock underneath the Sierra Nevada range of mountains.
David taught us how to walk, one foot in front of the other, so that we could be balanced, so that our eyes would be free to look up, not down at our feet. He spoke of the three levels of being in nature: Concentration: where you are taking in information, cataloguing, cognitive thinking. Attention:tuning in to the surroundings, accuity of the senses, letting yourself be affected by nature, a sensory experience. Thirdly is Awareness where you lose yourself, there is no barrier between what is outside or inside the self, a spiritual experience. Awareness in nature is not easily achieved and may take years of meditative practice OR it’s possible that it is an innate ability of some to be so attuned. I imagine this was natural and necessary for the Native Americans as they lived with the land in order to survive and live as comfortably as they could in the ever changing environments.

There were always a lot of questions and the walks ended too quickly for most of us. We had only gotten the tip of the iceberg of all the knowledge that David had to offer. One day someone saw a Clarks Nutcracker (named after Clark from Lewis & Clark) in the top of a tree happily pulling pine nuts out of pine cones. This bird, David told us, is one of the smartest animals known and is responsible for the forestation of most of the Sierra Nevada as it caches untold thousands of pine nuts every year, a good many of which are never eaten and consequently germinate into seedlings. Over a ten-thousand year span of time the Clarks Nutcracker alone was responsible for foresting the entire state of Nevada with pinon trees. This was just one of the many “nuggets” David shared with us on our short forays into the woods. I think I can say that for the majority of us who walked with him, that it was not so much the information he shared, but more his wisdom and understanding of the great web of life we see in nature. There are connections that are obvious such as sunlight-water-photosynthesis-plant growth, etc. and then there are those connections, such as the mycorrhiza web of fungus under the earth that feeds the billions of hairlike roots and stretches around the globe, that we are oblivious too unless we chance upon the information. It was the magic and the mystery, and ultimately, the deep respect that David imbued in us for nature, as well as how we could be advocates for preserving it, that affected us all and made these walks a kind of prayer, a walking meditation.

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This is an incredible book. The photos are like nothing you’ve ever seen. You can buy it at Amazon.

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I didn’t take a lot of pictures on the walks. It seemed intrusive somehow and it was so easy to get lost in listening to David speak and scribbling what I could down in my little notebook. He has a wonderful website which you can access by clicking on his name in the first paragraph and two of his books I have are Wild Birds and one he co-wrote, Sierra Nevada Natural History, which is the “bible” of the Sierra Nevadas. Two books about birds that David highly recommends are: Why Birds Sing by David Rothenberger and The Singing Life of Birds by Donald Kroodsman. You can email David at david@whatbird.com. He does nature walks, guided tours in the Sierras, lectures, etc.

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Clarks Nutcracker can find its cached seeds under many feet of snow.

David & me–No, that’s not a partial eclipse. The shutter on my camera was stuck. We thought it was a nice artistic touch.

The mountain in Squaw Valley–granite and lava meet.

Stewart is ready for the nature hike–very suave poet!

The gathering in the parking lot before the walk. Scribbling down notes as fast as we can.

Not easy. Not as hard as you might think. Excruciating. Humiliating. Inspiring. Challenging. Heartbreaking. Exhilirating. Okay, enough, enough already! When you come to Squaw Valley for the poetry week, what you sign on for is to write a poem a day, have it done each morning by 9 AM and be in workshop awake and ready to read your poem to the 12 other poets and the presiding senior poet. Everyone comes with their own intentions: to break through some old habits and play with new ideas, forms, language or to focus on a particular subject matter, writing poems that have a link in some obvious, or not-so-obvious way or to experiment purely with what comes up on any given day, to manifest material that can then be molded into a more cohesive and refined piece of writing.

My focus this time was to try something a little different each day, mostly to do with the structure of the poem, as well as being open to how that might affect the subject matter, or vice-versa. One day I wrote an abecedarian poem (the first word of each line begins with a letter of the alphabet in a descending order A-Z). On another day, inspired by Dean Young’s craft talk on the “primative poem,” I was inspired to create a chant-type poem using rhythm and a type of musical score to write an “Ode to the Flame, the Teardrop, the Flute.” On the last day I was so exhausted (physically and creatively) that I wrote a letter, a funny letter, to my fellow poets, trying to lighten my own load, as well as theirs, as we were all on our last legs that Saturday morning.

There are days during the week when the poem pops out as sweet and close-to-perfect as can be and there are days when the battle has been joined and you joust with your mind and the words on the page and your idea of how that poem is supposed to look and feel and sound…ultimately, though, the week is about going there…wherever the muse takes you and keeping up! I’m sure we all had those days when we were ready to hang up our Thesaurus and jump in one of those rubber rafts cruising down the Truckee River, but the truth is, that no one, not even the seasoned, published poets, knows for sure what’s available on the cosmic poetry highway on any given day. You show up with pen in hand with an idea and a willingness to go the distance…that’s all you can do. There’s always that possibility that magic will happen and a poem will be born and live long enough to actually be heard by others, to be a force for good in this crazy world.

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Here are some more photos from the week of poets at work….

What’s that thing you’re pecking at, Christina??

Sharon Olds & Michael in one of the “morning meetings” as Sharon preferred to call them.

Harryette Mullen with Jenny doing a “Poem First Aid” Session under the sparkling aspens.

Lori getting her poem ready in the SV central headquarters. Hopefully, this one won’t get eaten by the computer.

Dean Young & C.D. Wright signing books after the Thursday night reading.

Sharon at the Thursday reading–always a hint of humor, a deep well of passion.

Dean reading his poems–funny and poignant–an outlaw with a heart of gold.