Dear Addie

Dear Addie, young child, don’t be fooled or benighted—
I’ll tell you the truth so you know,
And have in your heart all that schoolishness righted,
And grasp wonder well as you grow.
The breeze doesn’t blow from here to there,
Like a rivulet wand’ring at will;
The earth rolls around underneath all that air,
While the air remains fixed and still.
The trees and rocks, like your music box,
Are the tiny points jutting above;
And, pricking the tines as time unwinds,
They play out the song that we love.
Look up and see each tip-tilted tree
Whooshing as we fly along!
Press your delicate ear to a pine and hear
Its lilting and lovely song:

“Oh we know the way to the break of day,
Where the songbirds will beckon us bide,
But how can we heed, for we dare not delay
The sonata of eventide.
And oh! What delight—for then plays the night
With its blue tinkling grace notes of stars;
And they all invite the moon to ignite
Risoluto the rest of the bars.
The sunsong is long, but it sweetens the wheat,
Which quivers like golden strings.”

And you too my child, when you walk on your feet,
Make the music play wonderful things.

Some video highlights from kayaking the Rogue River in Oregon

Memory

With winter wind come the dusty white fragments,
Borne out of the vacuous alpine chill as falling stars--
Scepters, scintillating shafts and diamonds interlaced,
Entangling, entwined along the pinnacle crags.

I reach my hand slowly into the ethereal blanket
And pour out its weightless sand from an open palm.
Drifting flakes instantly flurry to fill the trough
And round the little mound with renewed softness.

The pines around the ridge grow gray with hoar,
Pointing into the wind with whispering fingers
Too quiet to reveal the secret they all descry
In the distance. Soon they are white, all white.

Through the receding clouds night calls up flightless
Feathers to stretch and catch the morning’s sun
And fling its sparks to set the ice aflame with
Light before they bow finally to its warmth.

Storm and clear, night and day this place receives
Afresh each fine dance of crystal wind upon it;
But here and there in secret places I can discover
The one laid upon the other in gentle anamnesis,

And even when crystal streams have sipped the last drops
From this peak to slake the waking summer swelter,
You and I will spread a blanket upon the ground, and
Lay upon it cheese, and music, and an enduring hour or two.

And beneath that hour I will still find the summers
Of sixth and seventh grade with their campfires and
Milky stars and chilling dips in the lake with the
Other boys whose company swirled around me with contentment.

And beneath those I still stand as a child next to my father,
Saluting for a photograph my mother took, while my brother,
In yellow shirt with Popsicle stains, grins through missing
Teeth, and my tiny sister grins obliviously from a backpack.