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About The North Coast times-eagle. (Wheeler, Oregon) 1971-2007 | View Entire Issue (March 1, 2002)
PAGE 10 GYPSY OF THE SOIL RED RAG IN THE ROAD A red cloth with sex on it abandoned on a country road Boy’s milk, maybe? No The slender white necks of the geese bobbing in a farmer’s frontyard webbed feet flapping on solid ground A child’s tricycle Brown dog sleeping on warm asphalt barely lifting its dusty curious fur. Cheerfully alarmed call of crows Wispy blue smoke against the lively green firs. Forever green Wan sunlight. Opening the road up and curving breezily. Musically trickling creek. The first strong spring sunshine suffusing all affectionate energy And I am whispering to myself about the delicate orgasms a fluttering bird might make nesting in the brown curls of your pubic. When I think thoughts like this, the front wheel might fall off the red moving car. Uncertain I am. Should I turn around, drive back and see if that red corduroy rag is still sticky, sopping, moist with sex? Emotions never deceive me, even when ludicrously wrong. Which young lovers recently wiped themselves off? The winter white bodies exposed to the rays of love How I long to be one of them. B4RB4R4 GRANT SRING RAIN IN OREGON -WALT CURTIS POETRY In a time of extreme hostility mere civility is a radical act -MPMc SAY GOODBYE TO THE SAD RAGS OF WINTER I walked around and around the barren horse-chestnut tree and considered all my days one until I heard the wind shake the branches with its murmurings usually an Oregon rain is just mist that softly moistens the landscape and abundantly produces flora and other types of vegetation but this deluge on a march day is stinking muck sucking stuff which both combats the drought of last year and prepares the way for the annual vernal rebirth by eroding rivuleted canals down into the muddy fertile terrain so that microbiotic creatures can squirm their ways and etch tracks through suborbia helping to add humus to the murky foundations for plant life to feed from while simultaneously and symbiotically reaping the benefits of oxygen provided by herbomorphic entities for water is more than a drink or thirst quenching liquid and all aspects of it help shape this imperfect spheroidal planet both above and below its surface more exquisitely than michelangelo sculpted the elegant body of david or the bemuscled torso of a macho godhead angrily pointing adam and eve out of paradise forever as well as much more for this sparkling bubbling fluid runs deep in terrestrial existence recycled from vapor to water to ice and that is rain for ya even Oregon rain He told me I had beautiful hands, sculpted I looked, they were still my hands Sculpted, indeed, by work and unaccustomed graspings, at the end of my own arms I might call them interesting largeboned, strong My grandmother’s. From the washtub, milking cows to sink. Fingernails flat as if some steamroller pressed those genes for work not polish. Yes longfingered, deserving of rings, but they bind the callus where the hammer fits, the sledge slips across the palm. The fortune teller said scars from Atlantis, mind crossed by heart. These hands seed, gather earthworms, pull rock, roots from clay, tend even rows an ancient pulse steady in mine Grandmother’s last grip squeezed in a language I didn’t know yet learned, my hands grew wide, capable, flat. Beautiful, yes, and sculpted by snow, the year’s winds, the sweaty passage, hope. They circle the warm cup opening, closing upon the legacy — a gypsy of the soil. -MARNIE PURPLE ODE FROM THE BOOK OF CRYPTICS When I am gone, I shall come on the beach wind; Summer hot, in Springtime cool. The down along your arms will rise to greet me with touch light as memory’s finger in your mind when I am gone. -TA HUANG CHI (aka ROLF G. BROWN; d 1989) -ARTHUR HONEYMAN I watched the light move from branch to branch until the tree became a stream of fire in which I saw birds dancing chanting canticles to the wintry sun a distant bloody ball of frozen fire LATE I looked again and saw a school of winged dolphins sporting there and among them rose Leviathan its colossal bulk porpoising into space blowing a fountain of fire We are not ever lost and nothing delays us. We carry the sun on our backs and cover such ground as you would not believe The very sky became a field of fire I saw wagtails wheaters thrushes finches grow immense among the raging flames and take wing arrowing towards the sun I turned knowing that winter had ended We are the colonists of dark, the cousins of radiance, who shall bloom among you. -JOHN DIGBY HERE COMES THE SUN Sun comes streaking through the hemlock naked, warm She comes mellow golden A woman light, she feeds us -KATRINKA 4 Listen, do ndt move in your hard beds; we enter your rooms and the candles are lit as if by themselves, stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows, memories of the moon, warm bouquets of air...Listen, even now the breathing begins -MARK STRAND I put the seeds into the ground and day after day, all day long, light looks through dirt into the eyes of those oracles where they lie The seeds return the sun’s gaze. From the silent fountains of earth passionate flowers of light will flow upward into brightness turning everyday in contemplation of how all that grows is on fire -JOHN BUCKLEY (d. 1999)
