Heavy Frost on the ground this morning. Once again the Hummingbird feeder was frozen when I got up. I got in the hot tub early and Dot stole my underwear and danced out on the frozen lawn with them to throw them up into the air like pizza dough, spinning high above her head and then catching them in her teeth. Joyfully over and over only to lay down and stretch them between jaws and her back legs. Jesus that dog likes her fun.
We went for a walk with a friend out at the state park on the frosty board walk. There was a light westerly wind and a flock of skinny looking Robbins came down into the estuary dabbing in the icy mud. Dot has a new severe training collar and she is much better on a leash. The collar doesn’t seem to hurt her but she doesn’t pull as much. There are reports of Brown Bears all over the park but I did not see any fresh tracks today.
I have decided to share some of my unpublished poems today, It’s not a big deal that these are unpublished because I don’t send poems out for magazines much anymore. I write poems in the winter time for a poetry group and I write to keep my mind working, I write to know what I’m thinking about much in the way I write in a journal to know where I am and what I have been doing. Poetry tells me what I’ve been feeling. This first one is in the form of a Haibun; a short piece of pros followed by a haiku. This is from my Public Defender days
CAMERA OBSCURA
I asked him if he had ever seen something that no one else had seen. He was chained to the wall in our small town jail. Through two and a half feet of concrete, a storm was whipping rain at the outside walls and with each gust over sixty knots the cheap ceiling tiles rustled on their frames. He was looking at the tops of my shoes soaked through with water. “Only once, when I was five years old. My mom was cleaning house and she left the window open. A Dragonfly. A big one. I mean really. It had a wingspan of twelve feet. No I’m not kidding. It’s eyes were full of diamond-y kind of things. It’s body was all black and the wings were kind of bluish-clear . It landed on the wall of our kitchen. My mom was in the other room, and I yelled at her to tell her about it. She beat on the wall from where she was. I could hear her beating right under the bug and it twitched around…flew out the window. I never saw nothing like that ever again.
A frantic fall storm.
My head is a sealed box with
only one small hole.
Spruce tree in bright sun, on a cold day, 4/4/2020
I had a goal to read all the big fat books I had never finished in college. I wrote this one after reading the new translation of War And Peace.
READING WAR AND PEACE
“Drops dripped.”
The teapot simmered on the stove.
Old people harvested wheat
and distant generals wrote letters
to be carried to the capitol.
Armies marched.
The snow fell.
People fell in love.
People died.
Boys wanted to be soldiers,
girls wanted to be wives,
and those who thought they were clever
discovered they were not,
but sometimes not in time.
All of it just happened,
like the music,
of thawing snow
sliding off the eves
or the incidental tracks
of horse drawn carts
hauling wounded men
through a forest
of splintered trees.
Drops dripped,
and hit the ground
with imperceptible splashes
while the great Russian rivers
raged.
This is a seasonal poem I wrote after reading a new translation of Madame Bovery which was terrific and I finished it around this time last year.
ICE STORM
Four degrees and the willow tree
covered in frost,
is a pearl curtain
with last summers fawn
curled like a figurine beneath.
My heart is fragile:
no birds singing,
old friends in the hospital,
letters gone unanswered.
But my beloved, makes bread,
reading Madame Bovery in her flannel robe,
the yeasty dough rising under a heatlamp
by the stove.
Bread will rise,
like spring’s arrival
as the right ear of the once
spotted fawn twitches forward
when I stumble outside
to give thanks for these
blessings, then write
our names on the frosty grass.
All these photos were taken today on our walk out at Stargavan Park near Old Sitka.
Although I don’t think the New Yorker is going to publish a poem that ends with me alluding to writing our names in the frost with urine. Which is something of a family tradition among the Straleys.
The day sparkles sun
though the Swans have gone, and shots
still echo the hills.
jhs
Here is a recording I made in the office reading from Richard Nelsons, Hunters of The Northern Ice.
