To the Greenwood Gone

The people are the forest
Now the rest is dead and gone.
The middle world is quiet,
Murmuring trees without beasts,
With barely any birdsong.
The invisible still seethes,
But the trees sense only trees.

Woods have never been richer,
Thicker, more light-devouring,
Billions seeding billions more,
Metaphor on metaphor,
Condensing a twilight world
Grown dreary, leafy, hidden,
So confusing, so confused.

Noneness of Oneness

Supposedly, Salinger
Had a keen interest in Zen
And maybe Advaita
Vedanta Hinduism.
No wonder he stopped writing.
When you're one with the noneness,
Nothing's what left to express.

A Child's Praise of Doggerel

"three quarks for muster mark!"

When that I was and a little tiny boy,
My parents made rhymes that played on my name,
In lieu of lullabies, so I could enjoy
The tiny boy's sense of adoration and fame
That mother's and father's attention gives
When he is the only named child in the world
And everything he believes is his is his.

Every night, some chanted nonsense rhymes unfurled
Banners for an army of silly phrases,
Strung out in raggedly parallel syntax,
Narrative formations stumbling in places,
Luring me to sleep in dimly planned attacks....

Hark!
On a lark
We saw Mark
In the park 
After dark
Building his ark
From pine-straw and bark
To protect us from sharks
But just then a spark
Lit up his ark
So Mark
Who was smart
Right away disembarked
From his ark full of sparks
And he made the remark
That bark
Was for larks
Who live in the park
And sleep in the dark
And not for bark arks
Hammered by Mark
In the park 
After dark
When there's always a nice fire
Giving off sparks
A lot more sparks than sharks...

Spontaneous Monkey

It's boring to always play
The pensive, symbolic ape,
Head hanging and mouth agape,
Tracking down scampering prey,
Small thoughts in mental landscapes
Who know the thrill's to escape
To chatter another day.

First Birthday

Three hundred and sixty six days ago,
We'd been sleeping in snatches between contractions
For three consecutive nights already.

Our midwife was growing increasingly restive
About a well past-term delivery
An hour through mountains and snow to a hospital.

So we gave in, loaded the truck and went
Away from our nest, down to the damn hospital 
Timing each interval along the way,

Barely looking out at the Silvery Slocan
As we rounded Cape Horn under the Lid,
Skies like cold blankets soaked in Slocan's black water,

Narrow Route 6 walled by old snow and pines,
Winter-dark farms trailing woodsmoke, towns of few lights,
All the landmarks we loved in summer, dimmed.

We reached downtown Nelson under a light noon rain,
Pulled into the hospital parking lot
And jockeyed for a spot, not being urgent yet.

We had an appointment for a stress test,
But we weren't Canadians and had no health cards.
Our own crappy insurance meant nothing,

And before we could check in for the test,
We were separated, one doing paperwork,
Making various guarantees to pay,

Via credit cards and blood oaths, all coming bills,
While the other was stranded in a hall
Being torn up for renovations, unheated,

In labor on a plastic chair, alone.
By the time we were reunited and upstairs
Things were too far along to go back north.

The home-birth in the cabin by the lake was out.
We made peace with the little hospital,
Dowdy, underfunded, expensive, but friendly,

Kind to anxious first-time parents on edge
And in pain. They settled us in a soft-lit room
Down a hall where loud screams would be okay.

They took the usual measurements, ultrasound,
Signatures, due note of our birth requests--
No painkillers, minimal monitoring, time,

Especially time. And then the push
Began in earnest, hour after hour after hour,
Each featuring its own turn of events,

Our doula arrived, then departed to get soup.
The soup was tasty and soothing until
During one contraction it came back up and out.

The dim day turned into a foggy night
By the middle of the afternoon, and the room
Was shuttered, the lamps and machines muted.

The nurses changed shifts, the midwife and doula stayed,
The one quiet except for instructions,
The other encouraging, crooning, holding tight.

The scene shifted from bed to birthing tub.
A calmer, chanting, almost tranquil phase began.
For a few hours it was almost blissful.

We joked, we sang, we said sweet and endearing things,
Between the contractions and the pushing,
And we thought you would emerge soon, but you didn't.

The midwife was concerned things had plateaued.
Around late mid-evening the tub was abandoned.
Now we paced the room between contractions.

The pain lost its mystic, spiritual distance
And became a beast with teeth and hot breath
Capable of ripping out howls, curses, and real screams.

The nurses changed shifts again. The date changed.
The doula comforted us. The midwife took notes
And shook her head, pursed her lips, and advised

One more hard push, and if the water didn't break,
She would open the amniotic sac
To free you for the hard swim toward your own life.

And then the scene returned to bed for good.
The next four hours knotted themselves into a rose
Of blood, pain, deep-throated howls from shared throats

Mother, father, doula head to head together,
Midwife at the foot of the bed, by turns
Looking pleased, concerned or bored, nurses here and there,

The fetal heartbeat monitor our guide,
Our steady beacon through the small hours of the night,
Your confident reassurance to us

That you were still there, you were all right, you were calm,
Even as you and your mother entered,
Father following, the heart of the labyrinth

From which we must emerge transformed, as three,
When at last a wiser nurse suggested a change
In the rhythm of breathing and pushing

And finally, just after four in the morning,
From the wet coil of exhaustion and pain
You began to rotate your way out to the world.

In the necessary gush of dark blood,
After all those days and nights and hours you arrived
In a rush so quick you were hard to catch.

You glistened in the red dark, your eyes wide open,
And we placed you on your mother's soft breast. 
We were glad, spent, and stunned. And you were here.

"Something Weird Happened"

You, yes, you
Wake me up
At midnight

Crying out
"Something weird
Happened!" then

Falling back
Into sleep
Leaving me

To wonder
If I missed
Something weird

And the world
No longer
Is the same

And if so
What's different
Now what's wrong?

Then one night
Exactly
One week on

You do it
Once again,
Waking up

To call out
"Something weird
Has happened!"

Now I think
It must have.
It must. What?

Extra Wise and Far Away

Lady of the wilderness, wife of nomads,
Queen of the desert and scribe of hell, read me 
That bit again about the forest's revenge,

The part you left out of those other stories
Of intemperate gods, lusty goddesses,
Homo affectionate kings and wild men tamed,

You know, in between where the dreams go missing
And where the surviving king screws up his quest
To find the secret to living forever.

How is it the cedars let us cut them down,
Even without gods or demons to guard them?
What secret rarer than life could they save?

I know there must be a tablet left somewhere
Among the kings' crowns piled in the House of Dust
Where you recorded some wisdom cut trees kept

And will keep until the time comes when deserts
And wastes, dominions of scribe and sepulcher,
Have covered the world and been covered themselves.

Then lost, long-buried seeds will stir that waited,
Like the dinosaurs' feathers and mammals' teeth
To make possible the next order of things

For the ageless metaphor, Atrahasis,
God-tricker, shell-builder, code-carrier, life,
To set loose from fresh mountaintops far away.