Bog Oak & The Pool

Bog Oak

The bole of it hummocked in the turf,
The knuckles of it deep like a tangled hand
Mummified, clasping the quag.
And the burl of it drowned there
Soaked to a fare-thee-well.
Impervious, hard as a cherry stone.
Death’s implacable fixedness
In the cold bog entombed.
Rock root to the world.

The Pool

Even at night,
When I am far away
From the pool in the Nephin Begs,
Even when I am not there stooped,
Peering through sedge at its silken stillness,
Or waiting in a blind of thorns
For some sudden wonder there to appear -
For which my life is the idiot quest -
The water ever sluices in, withal.

The surface shimmers
In the weird watery glow
Of a sickle moon drifting,
A bright star hung on its horn.

Sometimes, then, the water kelpie,
Become again a glimmering girl,
Rolls languidly to the still top
And slippery, shoulders it over Into slow concentric rings
That splinter the moon into wrinkled rippling winks
And rock the grasses browing the banks.

They rock me too while away I nod
Not asleep, nor yet awake,
But floating, cradled,
Above yawning water vaults.
Gently jostled in the soft twilight,
Lullabied by her water song
Whose beauty steals my breath,
Troubled by vague huge visions
Just beyond my sleepy sight.

The floating stars then fall
And with them, I with her,
Like sugar melting in lemon water
Tracing crystal trails weirdly down,
Fractured, prismed, and bending,
Like the paths to fading memories
Darkly to repose at the bottom of the pool,
Where all the secrets in sometimes slumber dwell.

From Achill Sounds, a collection of poems by Thomas J. Phalen, a friend.

operating Instructions For Plants

not hanford nuclear plants
mind you

filled with radio
active frequency shifts 
seeping, bleeding 
55 million barrels of

uranium
plutonium fool fuels

into down through

130 feet to Columbia River 
water table
transparent tables
where drowning skeletons devour 
questions 

old fears sifting
healthy dust, no.

these plants evolved in northwest 

Podocarpus, ‘maki’ loves some direct sun
needs to be in east winter window.

Ficus nerifolia, ‘willow leaf ficus’ bonsai
east window
watching for summer sunburn
likes dry air, misting is helpful.

Asparagus plumosus, ‘plumosa fern’
needs south window
during darker months
don’t water when soil still feels wet.

Dracaena compact will tolerate lower light
trim back to encourage branching.

wandering words

There are so many messages I can't interpret.
The hundred maples at the edge of my street shout orange, orange,
orange, in silent voices. And may say more if I could decipher.

How I want to understand the many calls of the birds migrating through
on their long journey. And what is the message of the shaggy
wave-curled sea quarreling around the black rocks out at the far point?

Perhaps words themselves wander off into other fields, like sheep lost
in the depths of the hills beyond the local hills so the shepherd has to
go climbing up and down, his legs aching, his breath heavy
in his chest until he spies them off there under

that far evergreen, and wrestles them down and brings them home.
 - Patricia Fargnoli
Pastoral
Then, Something
zen humanism
journal of a nobody
a poet reflects

tomita park, asahikawa

enter 
face 
stone basin water temple
clap hands three times

throw water
on grey stone guardian lions

red, orange, yellow leaves
fall 

into sky mirror reflections
escaping fresh snow dust 

old people shuffle along earth path
wearing intricate kimonos

designed by
stone 

Asahikawa loom creators 
weave wool season colors
into old mountain fabrics 

protecting brown bear families 
preparing their winter solitude

bow low 
o mountains
o west wind
o glorious lions 
at the entrance 

 

undercut banks

“Beside the rivering waters of, hither and thithering waters of, night.” 
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

Through the rain drunk meadow
Fat on mountain showers and drowsy
I stitch, in my scissor step, through the long grass
A furrow like a tipsy ploughman
And harvest before my boots
A skittering wake of hoppers blustery
Down to the rocky banks
Under cottonwood shade.

Trout wand in my hand,
A silly baton, slicing the air.
And like a conductor browbeating the woodwinds
I conjure the slipstream.

I come to track this raveling course
And to track the course in me;
To watch the stalking sun crest the canyon wall
And paint the water pewter shimmery.

To wonder too
At the dizzy stones
And mayflies
Clouding the wild roses.

To feel my boy’s old heart thump, still,
When the water piles up
On the sudden shoulders
Of the heavy trout.

To smell the consequence
Of my slippery steps
On the wet and awkward rocks
That bruise the mint and mugwort.

To see silver dimes clinging
To the water-jostled cress -
Glinting coins in the watery sun
That spend well still indeed.

And too there, once,
Gold-spurred columbines
Elegant as shooting stars
On stems impossibly delicate.

To listen to the fluent
Gravel-throated chortling
Of water on rocks
And the dark sluicing soughing
Of wind in the sedge -
Old languages I remember well
Wandering wild within willow banks.

To feel the cold on my wet pilgrim feet,
The chill on my late autumn cheeks
In the weird arctic half-light
As dusk draws down the glen on me
And the stars a sudden swath of sublime.

And to again remember, surely,
That never will I know
The deep watery secrets
In the currents of time
Unplumbed in dark undercut banks.

From Mountain Wizard, by Thomas J. Phalen.