Sunday, January 23, 2011

River

RIVER

I went down to the river

to listen and watch

as the river gave thanks

with its currents and eddies

and both of its banks

for the rain

the replenishing rain



Dean Metcalf c. 1970

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Segues: #1 of 1,000,000 - Responding to Notice What This Poem is Not Doing

2 of 1,000,000
but . . .

aye... yet there was....
..chance providing. . . simple sensing. . .
.....subverting . . . drifting . . . floating . . .
inordinate co-axialating . . . latitudinal paralleling . . .
......deeply delving . . . verticalizing . . .
............fossorial faunching . . .

. --r.anderson


1 of 1,000,000

(The Day Without Nouns)

Just for (the span of the sun and moon)
Name ( ) no thing
Along comes --blank-- the dark time

Make it (more than okay), let it
Be yours if there was a Name for that
Yet more, let it be beyond the gerund

Speak no (noun-meaning-word), just
pass along the (angled land) as if
There never was youth or (caution).

No need to Name the (feathered ones)
Sort the calls and cries (slot them)
in memory and (forget)


.....responding to William Stafford's Notice
.....What This Poem is Not Doing. The
.....original title of the response via
.....fortuitous typo, "The Day Without Nous." KB

See http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/William-Stafford/1649


Stemming the Wallowa Flow

Stemming the Wallowa flow...

Rivers of fur continue to flow here
.. otter and beaver, mink and weasel,
... though spotted cats are the lure,
..... coyotes and muskrat still pay the bills.
 

Nimi'ipuu always took a few...
.. for food and clothing and such like.
..... Contact time found a few metis,
..... refugees from fur brigades, living here.
 

Then trade... plews for guns,
.. and pots, axes, gee-gaws and booze
.... supplanted the balance and the rush
..... was on for soft gold to trade.
 

Homesteaders flooded in here
.. once the natives had been chased off.
... A desperate folk hungry for a dollar
..... turned every rock and beast to use.

Today, all seventeen trappers
.. travel our streams with roads along them,
... following the mystique and almost
..... paying for the gas they use
..
Now, the big money may lie
.. in the pockets of veterinarians
... that patch up stock dogs and pets,
..... the by-catch that survives.
 


Ahhh and the rare glimpse
.. of an otter or mink, a beaver or muskrat,
... raccoon or skunk marks the day
..... for those of us who yet play afield.


'Tis an old tradition this,
.. subduing beasts of field and bush
... with gin traps and snares
. ... for subsistence and sport.



r.anderson





plew: a beaver skin used as a standard unit of value in the fur trade

Friday, January 21, 2011

Meditation On a Leaky Raft

Meditation On a Leaky Raft

look ahead
...
for the next

.......thrill down
..........the river

.............paddle on
..........leave the past

.......back there
... stop wood
..... bail water
.........share only

............the splash
.......of the current

....moment . . .
..there is no
rush
to attain
.....the next rush


River Flows...

River flows...

The freshet this day
.. starts on my roof,
.... flows down my sidewalk,
...... joins the neighborhood ditch,
......... before it's name becomes River.

A little downstream
.. the eagles sit watch,
..... the mergansers float by,
....... and fishers whip water,
......... in hopes of rainbow quicksilver.

So too time flows
.. from now to then,
..... from then 'till tomorrow
...... and watchers sit by
..........casting lines and nets.

How do you
.. contribute to the flow,
.... snatch krill as they float by,
...... merely watch for drift
......... and fetch up in its logjams?

--r.anderson

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Your Poem in the Talons...



Osprey drawing used by permission of artist Jimmye Turner, Walla Walla, Wa.


To submit a poem to the Fishtrap "William Stafford Birthday
Community
Write" send it to staffordpoems at fishtrap.org

The Mullein Leaf

The Mullein Leaf

Happiness begins at seventy five grand,
and while I live in a neighborhood
of missing hubcaps and cigarette butts,
I can walk slow enough to drag my feet
and stop to look at European red slugs
wrapped around a glob of plastic
or spit in the river at the pookie mark,
watching the ripples erase my reflection.

I like September.
The grey clouds, drizzle
and yellow school buses.
It brings introspection.
Summer is the time of vacations,
birthday pool parties and sunburns.
Fall is the hunkering down of life,
even the spider’s web gathers rain.

While life is a gift,
not all gifts are what we’ve wished.
We all must bear grandma’s soap-on-a-rope.
Just ask the drug-addicted babies Kim is nurturing.

Today is my daughter’s first day of high school.
In the past, I’ve always given her a gift on this day.
I think this year it will be a mullein leaf
giving to me on a float trip
down the Snake River
to be used as bum fodder.
The lesson, nature provides.

Though my happiness may not reach the seventy five grand mark,
I’m content just to avoid jails and churches.

Nature provides,
drag your feet to find it.


Kevin Nusser, Portland, Oregon

Adrift

Adrift

I walk away at Kirkwood
to find the grave of the old ranch hand
Jan pointed out from a wooden bridge
across the Snake River.

For in the end,
like David Kirk,
I simply was.

Born Nov 26, 1852
Died Jan 3, 1916
He died of influenza
He died of kidney cancer
She died in an auto accident
She died of old age
He died of stroke
He died of a gunshot
He died

I was dead for
a million years
before I was born
and I’ll be dead
for millions of years
after I die.

And like taking a cup of water
out of the Snake River,
my life doesn’t alter the flow.
The river will still run
from Hell’s Canyon Dam
to Dug Bar
without me.

Today is the last day
I can write on the water
and it feels so feckless.

Tomorrow I can write
about the motorcycle trip home
stopping to unsore my ass
at Denny’s in LaGrande.

Next week I can write about my daughter’s
first week of high school at the
Arts and Communication Magnet Academy,
maybe about her cartooning class.

Or I can choose to not write
at all and simply be.
Neither will change
my gravestone.

For five days I was treated to a group experiment floating
down the river of Snake
Trying to see where I fit in,
From Ingrid’s isolation and disappointment
To Pam’s obsession with sheep,
Chelsea’s innocent vigor,
Vickie and Roberta’s laugh of loons,
Kathy’s quiet reflection,
Annick’s sentient halo of white hair,
Patrick’s indestructible hair of youth,
Caitlin’s fire of independence
John’s life of adventure
And Jan’s unassuming friendship.

I found that where I fit in
is between the boats
on a kayak.
Adrift, adrift, adrift.

Photos of rattlesnakes, fawns
Mormon crickets, lizard pictographs
and the canyon, the canyon, the canyon
will keep this trip in my memory.
And while it too will be feckless,
it is an adventure in my life.

If you etch-a-scetched my life
the connecting lines would center
on Joseph Oregon
with spokes out to Honolulu Hawaii
State College Pennsylvania,
Charleston South Carolina
and Beaverton Oregon.

If you etch-a-schetched my brain
the lines would center around purpose
with spokes out to Susan and Sarah,
my dogs Henry Bruno and Teddy
my life in science and my writing.

But in the end,
my gravestone, like David Kirk’s,
will simply say
“I was”


Kevin Nusser, Portland, OR


The Hike to Suicide Point

The Hike to Suicide Point

We are all on the walk to suicide

Some slow, some sudden
Some solo, some en masse
Suicide rises up from below

My cousin used car exhaust

John used a gun
I will use a motorbike
Or perhaps too much steak

Down the Canyon of Hell

Across the Snake at Two Corral
Uphill past the red lizard pictograph
And looking over the edge
To water a mile below
There is a point to suicide.

Kevin Nusser, Portland, OR