knowing who you don't know

it's a cyber awareness thing
aware that people are out there
they do exist
people of whom you could say
i had some cognitive interchanges with
this or that person
you get to know a style of writing
a style of argument

but
do i know anyone?

i have never met ron silliman
kirby olson if that's his real name
remains a complete mystery
the name itself conjures up surreal apprehension of the world
stu tells me he's studying to be a servant
at the altar of the lord but how do i know
JADL and his missus as far as i have been able to surmise
run a legitimate banking assessmet scheme whereby riches
fall onto their table often and they ride the rails of canada
i presume
brett says he's making films in LA what a scheme
who could believe that
but there it is
craig has a metawife in the philipines
somewhere he plays golf and climbs rocks
that's all i know i know nothing more
he traces odd connections of family history
and sends zingers
curtis deals in books i've been able to locate his stash
and when the deal comes down
i know where i'll go for a few essential items

sally
i am pretty sure exists
as does her husband john
i have eaten at her table
i have seen her husband stare gloomily
across the table like i'm some sort of
alien whose mathematical make-up could be discerned
and unravelled in a matter of minutes
i've played sally's guitars that is perhaps
the best way to know i've played with her
i've walked and prayed
and sung with john and sally
so i have tangible evidence of their existence
they've even flown me down to their home
and had me play music for their friends
so i know they are there

bill borneman claims to be a painter
in fairview montana
he has told me that he has a trailertractor
business on the side and that he owns a bar
halfway to ryegate
i believe him
he sold me a book once
that's enough for me

j is a mystery
he likes it that way
we're all rather mysterious to one another
are we not
he pans in with slick overarching assessments
of the way things are

something tells me he's actaully a robot that
the blogspot people are using to keep a watch
on me

various other words have appeared on my blog
but most of these voices i know from kirbyeez blog

blogging this summer has become rather tedious
i think
i'm going to give it up

let the record stand

this shall be the last post on this particular blog

thanks to everyone for chipping in

knowing structure and space

not such an odd proposal
i needn't consider the seemingly evident
strangeness of two protestants
escorting a catholic to a place of worship
taking the pains to go to the city and see there
an edifice conceived as a means of stating
a very involved sequence of meanings

you can do things to prepare for such a journey
you can leave even the departure sort of ambiguous
you can hinge the possibilities on factors
no one seems to be able to control

but then one finds oneself on a train
rolling down the track to a bigger city

we came to the station called union
i was in a strange place
even though i'd been there before
i did not know this place
it seemed to me that i had been someone else
at a different time with people who appeared
in my mind more like angels than anything else

it takes a meal to make people friends
to share food and thoughts is the only thing
worth doing socially everything else is just talk
and a meal amid the commercial joy of
hispanic innocence and the flow of people
walking through the market with summery outdoor
intentions is one way of locating ones status
in the universal pilgrimage

whenever i walk out onto busy streets that i do not know
i have the feeling of dreaming like somehow
this is not taking place in real time with real people
it is all somehow the development of a state of mind
which is more like dreaming
this is enhanced by the fact that all of a sudden
i see thousands of people whom i will never know

but i will deem to walk through their streets
i will deem to eat at their restaurants
i will walk up a steep hill
like a pilgrim urging himself onward

there i stood in the generous welcome space
the plaza outside the immense stylized steel re-enforced
concrete structure dedicated to what?

the name should be more disturbing than it is
to presume that there is such a thing as a lady
who is a queen and reigns above an immense consort of
winged insubstantial but somehow intelligent beings

but since los angeles is a city that is successful to some degree
it has managed to stay there and grow
for well over 200 years and that it was initially
consecrated as a place where angels could have some sway
who will mind if i insert my being into the ethereal presence of the city

big cities have a catholic presence
big cities more or less ask for
cathedral presence

how do catholics arrange places of worship?

well if you want to say something with a building
you build something big and spacious
you permit an architect to use methods that while
betraying something of modern engineering technique
suggest at the same time a primitive encounter
a place where a memory of human tumult comes into play
and the resolution that somehow the playing out of a series
of events which impinge upon everyone takes on some sort
of visual expression

at the door of the cathedral of our lady of the angels
the sign welcomes the pilgrim
-welcome to your cathedral- it says
that's the only claim it makes
there is nothing to suggest that because of your
ethnic religious or intellectual background you may not
be welcome here
all are welcome

this is sort of difficult to arrange isn't it
i mean to say this is a house of god
and we ask only that you recognize it as such
is a matter which requires some attention
deliberation strategy and implementation skills

to walk through the door is to actualize the welcome
you are in and there is nothing to suggest
that it is not alright to be there
you can be there no matter who you are

you can walk in walk up some stairs and walk into an immense
open hallway that leads somewhat mysteriously
to some internal entry ways which pull the observor
into an even larger space that can be misconstrued for nothing else
this is a place of worship
even the sanctuary stands in open invitation
in a way that would not be quite so evident
were actual liturgies taking place at the time

one enters such a place in a cloud of quiet
one does not presume to make noise
the walls are lined with elegant tapestries
the faces of catholic heroes made from the actual photographed faces of local catholic men and women and children
faithful people or perhaps if possible a likeness from a previous representation
of a saint
all of these visages face the altar in the sanctuary and
thus
so i should too
and the pews sit there with humble receptivity
for you to sit
for you to kneel for you to bend in prayer
if you desire
if you must

perhaps because the concrete forms
are tinted with the color of soil
found in southern california
one feels like one is destined somehow
to be this color or one could even hold ones arm to the
cool concrete wall and see a closeness
this earthtone is a sort of fleshtone

i walked around i glided slowly from front to back i sat for long moments
i gazed into side spaces where elegant and interesting artwork stood
some of it beyond the scope of moneyed value
some of it innocent and worthless but a testimony to
innocent religious motivation

can i make a claim for being at home in such a place
i who live more than 1000 miles from such a place
how is it that one upon entering into such a place
desires then to participate in the liturgy of such a place
and to make oneself at home

there is a place amid the mayhem of a rather crass urban layout
a vast demeaning of the local geography that is a city
a place where one can escape into the necessary all important
escapes of momentary recognition of power in the world
heaped up and spread out liberally from the image
of a man impaled on a cross

amber light
and shards of white peer through
windows near the high ceiling
the natural light is always muted
but always sufficient

love wisdom
walk humbly with your god

that is imperative the message conveyed
by the rectangular and formed edifice
the presumption of the cathedral
and all it entails speaking confidently
in a land of ethereal considerations
(for who believes in angels anyway)
a place set apart for honest acknowledgement
a place of prayerful security in a world of
continual disenfranchisement

a protestant couple walks up the big hill
in the middle of a big city on a pretty hot
southern california day
and they even open the door for a straggling catholic to go in

as i walked away i was conscious of an architectural insult
as i looked back against the sky and saw the cathedral
poised there above the mayhem of the city
i noticed (as i had upon ascending the hill)
a way of some other thinking set of principles
to offer a gesture of dismissal and even one might say
deliberate hatred for the earthtone place of sober inebriation
an edifice built for no purpose
a big involved piece of tinkertoyed effort
which offers nothing more than a remark of resistance and doubt
from across the busy highway 101 below
a sort of middle finger of selfabsorbed intractable social conduct
an architectural deviation from an older way of knowing
a piece that offers a counter to the tower with the cross
a piece that says no
we can build a circular walkway but it is nothing
and we can encase a web of steel angles in a glass
and concrete structure and claim nothing whatsoever
in terms of necessity or natural curiosity
a building that claims its existence is enough
and what it proposes to contrast is doubtful in
whatever merit it might claim for itself

be that as it may
i can say
the thought and care and manual effort
that went into
our lady of the angels cathedral
touched me very deeply

and being accompanied there by
my noncatholic friends
makes it ever more memorable

it is always more than just the geography
or the technology

later that night i was awash in humility
afflicted somehow
but eventually cleansed
and it may have had more to do with sitting
in the blessed sacrament chapel
than the mexican food of the afternoon

go there yourself
don't trust my word

ask yourself upon walking into the cathedral
is this for me?

amen

premonition blues

en route to saskatoon

crow most often dines in groups of two or three -
i've seen no discord at his roadside table
set with bones and hide and flesh.
he finds community and sustenance
where some see nothing but decay and waste.

because the wrecks of commerce are his daily fare,
he strays not far from the road we share.

he prefers to live where life meets death.

a glamourous creature he is not
he is perhaps the model for a charitable monk
all clad in black
he flies no higher than need be to save himself from harm.

his course remains subject to change
and oft steers him against the flow.

he welcomes for the rest of us
the stench of life no longer fresh and new.

crow dives into it shoulder deep: he knows that
scavenging and salvage jobs
can be no less God's work
than cleaner and more glorious trades.

Justin Doyle
February 11 2011

this poet is still alive
i saw him just the other day
i don't know what he'll think
about me publishing his poem without his
explicit permission
but to hell with all that
i mean he sent the poem to me
i think i can do whatever in hell i care to do with it

i appreciate the poem
because it sounds like something the poet would just say

i apologize for the editing that was necessary
in order to find the line breaks
and the disregard for capital letters

summer rain

i awoke dreaming i had dreamed
before waking and long after i awoke
i perceived the world in the manner
of dreaming when i looked out at rain

it has not changed much
one hour later i still am
more or less convinced
this is a form of dreaming

if robert pete williams has anything
to say about it this sort of loneliness
is the inescapable reality of all of us
it behooves us to sing

everything is fitting into surreal settings
i am torn upside down and thrown around
twisted tumbled and tormented
with the unspeakable beauty of the sky

you face a certain sadness when it rains
you do i do
the long drizzling splash of water
feeds the heart with tears

everyone must have cryin' in the rain days
welcome one and all to rain town

by way of explanation

last week i attended a baseball game with the wife of my friend greg
and i was moved to consider a number of things so let me begin with the overall impression of the ballpark it was such a glitzy noisy place it sits there in all it's charm minnesota fans getting back to playing on grass such a sweet idea but it is an experience of constant discomfort what is it to go to a baseball game what is it to sit there and try to watch a game amid the mayhem of erratic human activity all contained in a stadium

while i must acknowledge the free seats it was painful to sit where i sat i sat in an aisleseat right within visual range of right field and first base i sat next to a lady who i feel was decidedly indifferent about the game and indifferent to the fact that i was intent on really watching the game and because we sat on the aisle it was almost impossible to watch the game with consistent attention because of the constant stream of hungry distracted nervous thirsty desperate people who wove by and the venders who yelled and sold worthless crap for a high price i was not able to focus on the game and this was a terrible feeling

between each inning the whole ballpark was flooded with loud heavy bass affect rock noise from the loudspeakers this fact alone has moved me to state that i will never go to another twins game it's over for me i will not go again plus there is this constant visual blitzkrieg taking place the digitized screens and there are groups a raging drunken goofy women having a night out being all gaga before some camera singing karaoke

my contention that they let the girls in is this
and while i have my difficulties with the fair sex
these days i do not wish to condemn in judgement
all that i see and experience in femininity these days
it is simply that between the visual distraction all the hyped up food and drink concessions which by right should be taken care of largely at home and the women should be there to prepare it now it is hoisted into the social atmosphere in the form of money grubbing sweating desperadoes who want to sell you things you should not eat anyway
and then there are young women there who sit and talk about babble that they babble
when it's time to babble they pay what 40 bucks to come to a place where they just babble to one another while a guy like me might be trying to concentrate on the game which is a foolish proposition anyway because everything around him militates against the possibility of concentrating on the game they even remove all the stats from visual access between innings so you can't size up who is doing what how many errors on the field how many strikes thrown
etc until the inning begins again

there was a time and i was there and i saw it with my eyes when
a ball game was by and large a male phenomenon and men
sat around a very concentrated effort on the part of two teams to
outwit and out play one another and it was sort of sacred
and we attended to that with vigilance and rapt attention and we
moved with the possibilities and the air the day or night had brought about

it is in ruins
it has become a spattering array of visual
audible and gastric distraction

the only remedy is for women to say
OK guys that gets to be your sacred ritual
we don't have to attend that
it is a place where you work out what you need
and there can be a few women poets around like marianne moore
who bestow sacred encouragement upon the rite
but there can be no more of the girl zaneyness
and screaming
the ballpark is a guy place
and girls can only make a mess of it
i'm sorry
that's the way it is
the girls who play baseball are mocking everything

so this is my summer discontent
i have had to make a lifestand judgement on a game
and the judgement is
i will never attend another probaseball game as long as i live
as long as the visuals and the audibles persist
as long as it is only a pathetic distraction
in a commercialized sea of grease sweat and
human pathos

once we acknowledge the intense social failure
everything else will fall into place
but having killed baseball
is to have rendered the male gathering ritual
into an almost shameful display of ineptitude
into a pathetic distracted aimless perpetual
listlessness of meaninglessness abject and foul devastations

and i'll have nothing more to do with it
if in any way baseball is an expression of free market capitalism it is an expression of the most hideous attributes known to mankind
and i'll have nothing more to do with it

cognitive lamentations

watched the devastation
afflicted with ennui

bereft now of meaning
a game we played with zeal

a thinking man's game
now a blitz of distraction

noise and visual trash
heaped at the eyes

with all the nonchalance
of a volcanic eruption

once we were proper heroes
once long ago we knew the stats

cards we traded - innocence
and determination were everything

we let the girls in
it's all ridiculous now

it's all nonsense it's all over
we may as well call it quits

grab our mitts and go home

like so many other good ideas
someone maybe many

decided to phuq it up
make the spectacle expensive

and empty
now devoid of heroes

now a pathetic showcase
for overpaid pretenders

what else
if i hang around

will they take and destroy
before my very eyes

i am sorely troubled
baseball is in ruins

amen

cognitive assonance

The Noise That Time Makes

by

Merrill Moore

The noise that time makes in passing by
Is very slight but even you can hear it,
Having not necessarily to be near it,
Needing only the slightest will to try:

Hold the receiver of a telephone
To your ear when no one is talking on the line
And what may at first sound to you like a whine
Of wind over distant wires is Time's own
Garments brushing against a windy cloud.

That same noise again but not so well
May be heard by taking a small cockle-shell
From the sand and holding it against your head;
Then you can hear Time's footsteps as they pass
Over the earth brushing the eternal grass.

knowledge and blood pressure

thought this morning of religious zealotry
what takes the human imagination to places of ultimatums

what to weave around oneself a web of meanings
a constellation of certainties
and assert oneself into the world just like anyone else
only with more fervour

some folks sit almost dead
they do very little on any given day
they too are zealots
zealots for the world where nothing important
really ever happens

do all humans espouse a certain zealotry
channel their excitement into something
as the only remaining hope for the world

passionate rhetoric is actually love poetry
it's the only context in which it works
if there is no love there is no poetry

may as well be a babbling auctioneer

i know a man who sits in his well protected fort of trash and trade
he sits paranoid certain that he's got it figured out
certain that the hot breath of the monster
is just out back
and nothing anyone can do short of call
the powers of ultimate good down to bear upon the
forces of destruction
will assist in allaying the intrepid demon

the trial as time goes on is to recognize that
the mind is always large enough and expansive enough
and flexible enough to widen its berth
to accommodate the troubling mystery of existing
and the mind must needs be cleaned and repaired
like a canoe after a rocky rapids tour

wounded it is often difficult to suspend
religious certainties
the juggler knows however
that another mental challenge always awaits
another bleeding heart is always in need
another invisible act of charity
is the only real attraction

i know the zealots
i know the souls who are more ardent
than myself
i know the visions that swell in the heart
and push a man's mind to dreams

the heroics are often without love poetry
and thus they foment little but mayhem

yet the zealots remain
they claim to know something we do not know
they feed off the ignorance of their enemies
and they continue on
like a vine inching up a wall

flannery o'connor in her novella
WISE BLOOD
follows a scenario of zealotry
gone haywire
where pathetic souls who by rights
might've thrived in a useful way
had they been properly schooled
instead flail about in burgeoning chaos
of social disconnections

the zealots are here
no less than mosquitoes

in the stacks

i recently visited the library and sought out a few books
the experience was one of wonder
i wondered why i could not find the books i looked for
for i was told by the computer that these books were on the shelf
but in the looking around i found another book
actually two
both of which have proven as useful for my insight
into present day areas of study

the forthcoming quote is from a paperback
entitled
TREATY TRIP
based on the journal which Claude Lewis kept
while on a journey up to the rivers and lakes
of Manitoba with his brother Sinclair
1924
the text is edited and abridged by
donald greene and george knox and published
in 1959

i am curious about the following line
because a previous reader has manually deleted the line
with a pencil literally crossed it out

the text is interspersed with the pieces of a novel Sinclair Lewis
wrote after the canoe trip
MANTRAP p 167

"nobody ever moves ten inches in the North
without being seen"

the following is Sinclair's description
of the land he visited and the way it left
it's impression upon him

'There was a good deal of regional patriotism. The outside
was regarded with suspicion: it was a place that one might visit from
time to time, to see relatives or for relaxation.....()>>>... [ the next line is the one that is crossed out] - and parenthetized - (The Pas {LaPas} is about 3/4 loose, and you can go as far as you like," Claude Lewis reports)-.....

what follows is a judgement he made
upon his brother's ability to withstand the trial of
life in the summer in the north which seems to have
involved drinking whoring gambling fishing and
running rapids and some writing

at any rate
i was delighted to read the whole thing
and i plan to quote again from the text
at a later date

my point today is simply the
acknowledgement of pleasure
which i suspect is all but lost
the pleasure of finding a book
you did not know you wanted to read

cyber-epistemology

can it be said that anything is known in cyberspace
it all flits
flits by

something anything a word a statement a picture
a digital video clip sits there forever (or what will eventually be the case
everything will be erased and forgotten) and is nowhere
it has little substantial legitimacy in any respect of the word
cyberspace is superfluous
yet nearly everyone regards it as meaningful
the message of the media is insubstantia media res
there is nothing to be gained or understood in
the webworld

that negotiations happen is no secret
that information is transmitted cannot be denied

it is only that the very immediacy of the event
precludes any sort of genuine verification of value

we are swirled into a random barrage of
digitized events

our world breaks up like the malfunctioning of
a digital tv when the pixils freeze and the image
breaks up into a thousand disconnected visual pieces

thus this impression marks the day
and we are left with nothing

a worldwide delusion
and the frightening thing is
it is working
the utter uselessness of this computer world
is hoisted into our lives with complete impunity
no one can ever be blamed
yet we have given ourselves over to the utmost criminal intent
and we give it our tacit blessing
convinced that it is indeed meaningful

there is nothing to be known here
the moment we achieve a bit of information
we are presented with instantaneous fiction
it cannot last as a narrative or a memory
it is a void surrounded by a vaccuum inside a shifting gyre
charged with an electronic digital blinking screen
next to 500 others all on seperate channels

the word incoherence has been stripped of meaning

trapped in a tautological labyrinthe

human activity has been managed into
a vast web of cubicles and
manipulations of information
all in radically incomplete and highly suspect ways

and yet it passes for necessary even desireable activity

if ever there were an opportunity
for worldwide control of minds

when the electricity is shut off
the paper will come in handy

we share vexations and little else

i needed to get this off my chest
jh

epistemology and peaches

lately we've been blessed with sweet ripe peaches
i haven't come across a bad one in two weeks
two weeks of letting my teeth go into the
soft outerflesh into the juicy mush the
muscle of the fruit as it were
i know bliss for a moment it lasts only a moment
and nothing can make it last longer
is eternity inherent
i don't know
here i have but a memory of sweetness and now
the desire to see if perhaps just perhaps
there is one more
one more blessed dribble of
nectar down my chin into my beard

ahh

ahhh

theology in the subarctic

Truck Lights

Wintertime and very cold,
early afternoon but already dark.

I'm driving from Sombak'e (Yellowknife)
to Beuchoko (Rae)
in my fifteen-year-old pickup truck,
and a Dene elder askes me for a ride.

The land has taught the Dene
to live in a world of silence.

After ten kilometeres, Kolchia relects:
"Driving the truck is like having faith in God."

I'm trying to figure out what he means,
but after two kilometres I give up:
"Grandpa, you talked about driving and faith in God.
I'm not sure what you meant."

Kolchia turned slightly towards me:
"You started the engine and you put the lights on.
We could have said, 'We see only one hundred metres ahead.
Farther on, it's one hundred kilometres of darkness,
so we cannot go to Beuchoko.'
But you got the truck into gear,
we started to move,
and the lights kept showing ahead of us.

Must be the way with God, too,
who shows us only a bit into the future,
just enough for our next move.
If we are afraid and if we stand still,
we'll never see farther ahead.
But if we go with the little light we have,
the light keeps showing us the way on and on."

a poem by Fr. Rene Fumoleau
an Oblate of Mary Immaculate
in the far north

tattered epistasis

being bruised and battered is a way of being
it happens in accidents
it happens in going about life quite naturally
suddenly you are wounded
weaker than when you first arrived
and the wound gives rise to other pain
and thus one interprets the work in terms of pain

comfort is not absent
but it is hard to come by

i know i sit in a little basement cell
typing out words on a screen that i will preserve
in a micro chip or a series of them somewhere

but i also know that my physical body is contending with
significant pain
and to be able to manage that is a sort of daily trick

morphine would take care of the general discomfort
but it would do nothing to assist healing
so i am today on the path of my healing
today i begin the task of notifying
the hands-on healers who will
give themselves over to
the little project of helping br john's shoulder heal

this injury has a slight effect on the way i hold my guitar
and i sing sad contry ballads with more affectation of real pain
so that's always good
i mean
we need more of that

and alleluias abound in the monastery still
like the invisible sonic ripples off a bell when it has been rung
which go on forever like ripples on a the surface of the water
we are aripple with life
sometimes it seems
triplerippled

and when all is said and done
i agree with the metis legend
of the buffalo all going into a large hole in the ground
but they will be back
the buffalo will be back

most all the damages of winter are covered over
by the flood of spring green

and thus i know i know what i know when i know it
said the ripple bored bard of ripplington

kora is in her moist musty cave
and crickets applaud her

fish story

one day in october
me and my 4 friends and my family went to the missouri river
we were after fish
trout to be exact
brown trout would be preferable
we were using big threehook imitation minnow lures

we were drifting along in a drift boat
and we stopped at an island

in this one little pond we found snails
and tadpoles

we caught no fish that day
we could see them under the boat
but even my dad didn't catch any fish
but
we did have fun
we floated from wolfcreek to craig
which is about 20 miles on the river

my dad always says
it's not about catching fish anyway
i mean
we did fish no matter what
and the day was beautiful

by - luke

luke was so excited by the comments of his last narrative
he wanted to relate another

i gave up blogging for lent again
somewhat inadvertantly

computers are causing me great anxiety

naps are more important than computers anyway

yawn

ash wednesday haiku

humble ashes mark
a soul for a season: alms
prayer, cross of joy

december ducks

one day
i went duck hunting
down at the ditches
my dad and tucker did the hunting
i watched and watched
then i scared some ducks away
two of 'em
my dad shot five ducks
we also saw a fox we did
it was interested in eating ducks
then we walked back
we walked somewhere else
no ducks
my dad walked across one of the ditches
and he looked on the other side
and he cracked the ice on the end of the ditch
then we saw three probably a mile away from us
three big deer one big buck four all together
the buck was sitting down
then we saw a hawk or an osprey or an eagle
i don't know for sure which
and then a wood duck
tucker was running around scaring everything in sight

when i came home
i was really excited because
on the way
i got to carry the ducks to the car

they were pretty stinky

and that's the end of my story

by luke hanson

my nephew was interested in blogging
i said i would be his
amanuensis
this is one of his hunting stories

geologist for a day

(where does all the inimitable well honed prose go when
it decides to go when it just disappears)

i set out to find a fault
i a fool and my mad brother went
no tools only a car and an idea
of a map in my head after looking
on the web
i translate that sattelite view into
a groundlevel orientation
this grove of trees this far on the road
this far off the road will i walk

i located a drainage area where there
was obvious distinction between both sides
of the banks of the ditch
one side had a lot of shale
the other was basically desert dirt
i kicked at it for awhile just to make sure
and sure enough there was no shale on this side
so what does that mean
is there a little rift here on the surface of the desert

a week before adeline settle took leave of her ranch

i attribute the earthquake in the area to her spirit
leaving the land
that's my working hypohthesis here

what i aimed to understand was whether or not
the evidence was visible on the land

the wind was howling

i pulled on some boots to walk in the brush
and weaved then through sage

my brother and i walked up the runoff bed for awhile
to see if anything stood out as visibly aberrant
at one place we could see a small cliff that extended
about 8 ft higher than the opposite side with
shale dirt clay and pebblebeds obvious in the wall

hmnh i said

so i walked the other way while my brother
went back to the car

i happened upon a strange phenomenon
a sink hole
i looked close
it was as perfectly round as anything round in nature
about 5 ft in diameter
and sunk about 2ft
the rim of the geoindentation was new dirt
so it looked to me like it had happened
very recently

hnmh i said

well i walked around and happened upon
a ridge of shale
the only ridge of shale anywhere near
it lay as a spine might if someone were flexing their back
or like a buffalo hump
or like something slowly emerging out of the soil
i walked along this shale mound which extended in
an easterlywesterly way for about 400 yds

i surmise from my observing the map once again
after i returned that i was standing very very near
the spot indicated by the arrow which presumes to pinpoint the epicenter
realizing of course that the quake happened
about 15 miles below
and man did i feel tiny when i thought about that

did i find the fault
i suppose i can say i got near the area
where the fault faults its faults
tectonically speaking

and that was enough for me
i enjoyed the whole excursion
and while i cannot assume the status
of a professional earth mucker
and what might be called
a geovoyeur
trenchdweller dust sweeper
still i can look at the earth and know some things
i am a geovoyeur i guess
titillated by the beauty and power
inherent there

in the wake of the quake we have
a collapsed mineshaft

one person died on the ski hill
first one ever
his name was cloud

N46.79 - W112.18

i stood out there in the cold thinking
i know someone who could help me
understand this better
and i knew someone who knew this land
like few people ever get to know land
and it all seemed immediately evident
that nothing had passed
life is altered ever so subtly
i was cold thinking about these things
it was just about time to call it good

one day we're playing chopin and
african spirituals on the piano
there's a little rattle of the pictures on the wall
some cattle moan in the distance
and the wind blows
and the next day dawns

and that's it
that's all there is

fishing in january

i thought back to a day when i might've fished
in the rivers of montana in january
i think i had never done it
but we made the plan to go so we went
but ran some town errands
and took care of some problems
i locked the keys in my car
triple AAA is a good thing
we drove north and i listened
as my friend spoke of professinal woe
on his cell phone it was cloudy but sun was
going to shine i could see up to the pass
the continental divide that an elliptical blue hole
was emerging over the peaks to the west
and fishing we went
the dog a labradoodle was in the back
a few hours later he swam into my line and snagged a
huge draped wooly bugger on his leg
he was patient as i pulled the hook
it was windy like it is often windy
down the canyons in the high mountains
and i wasn't actually dressed very well for the outing
but i resolved to fish the bank find the open places for casting
and let the wetflies roll along the rocky bottom
as best i could
casting was hard
and i caught nothing
i looked at the ribbed ridges
where rivulets begin and i watched the dog
romp with reckless abandon through the trees
along the railroad tracks in the water
geeses and duckses flew about casting shadows
and honking and quacking
the drive through wolf creek canyon is amazing
the colors the rocks and the formations
are mesmerizing
and the light plays off the walls of
red and beige and grey granite
but i caught nothing
and i don't care i swung my arm in the air
at a few moments i was forced to concentrate on tieing a fly on
my tippet or releasing a tree snag or a strand of grass
from the shallows
but i was in ecstacy nonetheless
i was elated i was high i was enmeshed
in the wild and wilful fingers of mother nature
and i trudged through brush and wore
countless burrs on my sweater when all was said and done
as many as the dog (tucker) wore on his coat
the wind whipped into my nostrils and were i not
so delirious with delight i would've had a headache
it was so crisp and clean and cool
later i sat at the bar in my brothers' house
and ate nachos
and later still i listened to irish music
and watched as young ladies jigged for all they were worth
and then i ate a tangerine sorbet cone
and actually did contract a slight headache
for my zealousness for the gelato was
a bit excessive
i watched television for the first time in ages
and enjoyed nothing as the night grew on
so much as south park
i slept soundly later on

there will never be another day
quite like yesterday
so much happening
i can hardly keep up

geography and knowing

the streets
i know them
i coursed along them countless times
on bicycle
then car
here i learned to drive

the buildings i know
they are the same
new people new business
but the buildings do not change

names emerge from a life long ago
from laughter and work of days gone by
neighbors are the same

history swells up from the gulch
still the booming sound of a city being born
one could choose to write a history
based on crime

a church looms high
steeples hold the eye
there i knew confirmation

this is my town
this the place where i seized upon
the social moves and attitudes
where imperatives like cattle prods
i only thought i knew
are lingering to remind me now

still the weather breaks over the divide
not just the melting water
to this or that drainage

all the characters are the same
the actors have merely changed
the play of desperation and security
worked out in the daily news
or in the silent torment of a human heart

this is my town
i do not have to think about the names of streets
i know the map the layout the landscape
and thus to a degree
i know myself

alas we all belong to where we learned to think
to love to fight to search and to fish
some of flesh and blood are always there

life is a play of slowmoving slowchanging sameness
memory thrives in a template of maps and architecture
and thus we know

on the 12th day of christmas

Motherless through all the years,
Fatherless upon the earth,
God before the world began
As man you came to birth.

Though your father is so old
He is but one age with you,
And your mother but a child,
Older she, but younger too.

Only mother of my God,
Open wide the stable door,
And let me as the ox may do
The master of the skies adore.

I'll be his servant here below,
And watch for him by night by day,
And from the infant chieftain's side
Turn the herdboy's dogs away.

I'll wash his poor and ragged clothes,
And while I dry them in the sun,
O Mary, if you let me I
Will wrap him warmly in my own.

--circa. 1580

Fr. Hugh MacCawell
Archbishop of Armagh, Ireland