13 July 2010

The Gulf Oil Spill: No pictures, few answers

A good blog entry from Best Friends dealing with the difficulty since the media blackout of getting good information... we heard today, however that the USCG has lifted its ban on press... not sure if this is true...



The Gulf Oil Spill: No pictures, few answers

08 January 2010

we get there again (field report)

a week since our completion of the yearly circuit
and still we find these muddy flats
under the
generous bright paw filled and poised below
north.
geese have their seams across sky and chuck.
let these few minutes stand for those.

we find our instruments are not key.

these largely un-moorable instants -

the calendar flows like honey and the cupboard is bare.
wait for the next remittance.
allow extra time as
a tax on the poor.

in the air we have seen all manner of great things.

we find these waters fine, though bruised, and needing
further care.

our last entries are not final. when we measure the
temperature of the sky
we find a layered delight, and
more.
every blackbird will find us - and still we
hear of

gunned down pelicans and their allies, pelicans
shot, and their cousins, shot, too.
shot and dead and dying and eyeing the sky from earth and sea to the sky and back,
sent back to the great and undifferentiated
all.

we cannot speak this code much longer. please find this
under the leaves, under the weighted winter moon -
our plea is what any would consider - the lengthening day - the pearl blue corner of the set sun.

06 January 2010

rivers in winter

past thanksgiving, december first, and the
real world steps up to the plate -
runners on third - here's the pitch that
makes the fire blaze.
these robins at the front gate take another slice
and rise.

we still stand in this place -
our orbit around these rocks
and things -
blood and sea,
poems and leaves -
stable -
the moon, too , will rise.

the sky is always fit
to the ground.
panamint or suisun,
nooksack, eel,
yuba pass where
the feather is born, and birthing
and bearing fruit now and
ever and renewed -

we once could speak the common tongue
now the sound
of raven's wings
paddling
across the flood of
air that floats above
the field. another current
slips through -
skagit, skykomish, skookumchuck,
mad.
the salish sea or
shasta river dammed and
drained.
these old words lit by the
transient sun, a killdeer warns the
sleeping herd - farmer's breath on the windowpane -
a porch light flickers -
one wave knocks two bones together -
a hare's escape, a raccoon's fate -
we hear stories of the fox who takes - listen!
this song is a song like any other -
it only eats what it sees is real
a river's bed will and
will not yield -
the world's divided at this point and
dividing still.