#AmericanWriters
He had driven half the night From far down San Joaquin Through Mariposa, up the Dangerous Mountain roads, And pulled in at eight a.m.
Down valley a smoke haze Three days heat, after five days r… Pitch glows on the fir-cones Across rocks and meadows Swarms of new flies.
Clearing the mind and sliding in to that created space, a web of waters steaming over rock… air misty but not raining, seeing this land from a boat on a…
He crawls to the edge of the foami… 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
Old Woman Nature naturally has a bag of bones tucked away somewhere. a whole room full of bones! A scattering of hair and cartilage
We finished clearing the last Section of trail by noon, High on the ridge-side Two thousand feet above the creek Reached the pass, went on
Washing Kai in the sauna, The kerosene lantern set on a box outside the ground-level window, Lights up the edge of the iron sto… washtub down on the slab
“O hell, what do mine eyes with grief behold?” Working with an old Singlejack miner, who can sense The vein and cleavage
One afternoon the last week in Ap… Showing Kai how to throw a hatche… One-half turn and it sticks in a s… He recalls the hatchet-head Without a handle, in the shop
Every tan rolling meadow will turn… Freeways are clogged all day Academies packed with scholars wri… City people lean and dark This land most real
Hammering a dent out of a bucket a woodpecker answers from the woods
Out there walking round, looking o… a rootstock, a birdcall, a seed th… plucking, digging, snaring, snaggi… barely getting by, no food out there on dusty slopes…
Swung from the toes out, Belly-breath riding on the knuckle… The ten-pound maul lifts up, Sails in an arc overhead, And then lifts you!
Ah to be alive on a mid-September morn fording a stream barefoot, pants rolled up, holding boots, pack on,
Siwashing it out once in Siuslaw… I slept under rhododendron All night blossoms fell Shivering on a sheet of cardboar… Feet stuck in my pack