From the Belly of the Whale

My latest volume of poems will be out in a few weeks.  It includes Yosemite at Fifty: The John Muir Poems. I am including one of the poems from the John Muir selection.  I am hoping to apply for a Guggenheim Fellowship this summer to work on a collection of poems on conservation and the endangered species of Yosemite.  These is such a need to bring awareness to a deeper level.  We need to feel the suffering of the earth and creation if we are to mobilize and change the way we live.

Reaching Out From the Chest

Everything in my chest

reaches out to bathe itself

in the chestnut colored loam;

strewn all about

with burnt and blackened

pieces of bark and wood.

I mingle with earth and

needles as if I am living from

the basement of my days.

My insides reach toward the

the forest floor that has

been asleep for the winter

of my adult life—building up

warmth and food for my soul

against a hollow detachment.

My wholeness is drawn out by

the heat of an age old woods;

by the heat of everyman’s

journey through these days

of finding a voice—finding

a central home in the me—one

of comfort and uncluttered

belonging to itself.

I find myself relaxed in my own

aging. Coming to myself like

a moist, sunlit bed of needles on

the dirt of thousands upon thousands

of aeons, and winters, flowering blooms

of gentle-life growth.

Cones pepper the view and

thick blankets of retreating snow

withdraw their reach to the bottom

of the hills; uncovering all that has

fallen and died since autumn; all

that is in there—that

I have forgotten until now.

My days have pulled in

a bit lately, retreating back

to the bottom of meaning

and the corrugated layers

of place and thing.

I find pieces of myself

scattered on the floor of my

life, and see wonder in the

ripening of passages

and aimless ambling turns.

The compost of my days is rich

with dank, wet, dark expression;

holding itself against the leaner times.

I have found more life in me

than I knew I had held.

The darkness holds no absence

it only hides the view. Flowers and

blooms for a future glory

lay dormant in the tubers

and roots of all life’s meandering

of imagination and place; of

time and space.

Standing on the remnants

of all that is past,

tenderness rises like the

scent of fresh dirt.

Tilled and open, it awaits

the planting of

the second half of life.

A raven sings this same song

from the other side of this vista.

I can hear it, but he escapes my view