a heartbeat after the bird has flown.

A Firmer Grasp of the Obvious

Evening, early June,

sweetly tired from the day’s work,

lazed out on the back porch with friends,

just finished with dinner

(asparagus and spinach fresh from the garden;

venison backstrap

smoky and rare),

watching the sunset

luster the ocean,

stiff-winged swifts

etching the air,

a full moon rising like a fever of pearl

huge above the redwoods,

I’m seized by the realization

I’ll never understand

the origin and destination of the universe,

the meaning or purpose of life, none of the answers

to the great questions of being,

and probably not much else.

And that knowledge, at last,

making me happy.

The Work of Art

The only essential creation

Is a life that gives you life.

Figure you’re doing real good

When all you need

Is bait and ice.

Steelhead Fishing, Smith River, January

So cold I’m sure I’d piss snowflakes

before my plumbing froze.

So cold the guides on my Lamiglass

freeze between casts, forcing me

to dip the rod in the warmer river

to melt them clear

for another futile cast and drift

from the quick head of the riffle

down through the slow fan of the tail-out.

So in-fucking-credibly cold

that under the latest-miracle-fabric thermals,

layers of wool,

and insulated waders with thick socks,

I’m shivering like a chipmunk shitting marbles–

so close to total loss of motor control

I finally open to the obvious:

For what possible reason

am I risking hypothermia, frostbite, and further

brain damage

if not to hook a sea-run rainbow trout,

albeit one so numbed by icy water

it would be like snagging a sand-packed boot?

I can imagine many fine and sufficiently crazy answers,

but the truth is I don’t know.

The more philosophical might suggest

perhaps I’m really fishing

for the real reason I fish,

but that’s too many mirrors and French intellectuals

for me to survive short of twisted.

But if reason exists this side of insanity,

I suspect it’s simple and deep:

faith refreshed through flowing water;

the opalescent cascade of trout mating;

the way my heart flies open

when a sea-bright rainbow

slashes into a downstream run;

the salt-minted shimmer of divinity as it leaps.

The Third Bank of the River

The three deer drinking

in the moonlit shallows across the river

snap alert.

Muzzles dripping,

ears flared tense,

shiver of flanks as muscles coil

into that trembling poise

between stillness and flight,

they listen to my heartbeat

till I hear it myself.

Green Side Up

Kid, there’s only two things a tree planter needs to know:
the green side goes up, and ain’t no raingear in the world
that’ll keep you dry.

–PISS-FIR WILLIE

Once you’re soaked

It doesn’t matter

If it’s raining.

The trees go in

One by one by one

And you go on

Borne and lost in

The mindless rhythm,

Bent to the task.