poetry

archives to ashes

Photo courtesy The Daily Camera.

archives to ashes

what happens when the museum burns down –
the space that’s supposed to hold your history
the archives and artifacts
the record of your past?

we know this happens –
the county courthouse burned down
taking its deeds to the grave
leaving us unsure of our own house’s age

the Library of Congress burned
not once but twice
leaving Thomas Jefferson to reseed it
with his own books

but for these little western mining towns
what burns with the history museum?
photographs, yearbooks, maps and bits of settler life
mine scrip and speakeasy keepsakes

our memories are so faulty
without bits of concrete evidence
it’s too easy to have license
to create a new past

poetry

Jumbo Mountain Speaks

This was an assignment for the Emergence Magazine Nature Writing class. We edited work using feedback from the previous session, so this is an edited version of the poem from the May 31st post.

Jumbo Mountain Speaks

come rest your weariness
on these hard rocks
a stiff wind will buffet your body
proving the heart entombed
in your aching chest
still beats

face west
toward the long white wall of peaks
back to the cities
the fires the shards
those fights are for another hour

feel your hardness
drain into the rocks beneath your palms
your porous bones no match
for their fixed crystals
you were not meant for this
your soft bleeding body
weeps water, not ice

just sit and be
while the wind works its way into you
until your rage flickers out
and there’s new space
between your ribs

I know what it’s like
to feel your heart mined out
set upon by pickaxes
swarmed by the rapacious
proving up on false claims
of their right to strip the world
of whatever life they like

and I know
how to lie still night after night
staring unblinking into quiet stillness
until my shoulders ease;
how to outlast dismantling

it takes an achingly long time
for the ore to lose its currency
the forest to gain a voice
and the scars to grow over

but just listen now
to the exultant tough little aspens
reclaiming this mountain
their young leaves fizzing with joy
roots binding the wounded slope
proving
sometimes healing happens
even in this brutal world

poetry

Jumbo Mountain Speaks

Jumbo Mountain Speaks

come rest your weariness
here on these hard rocks
with a stiff wind
that will buffet your body
proving the heart
entombed in your aching chest
still beats

face west
toward the long white wall of peaks
back to the cities
the fires the glass
those are fights for another hour

feel your hardness
drain into the rocks beneath your palms
your porous bones no match
for their fixed crystals
you were not meant for this
a soft bleeding body
that weeps water, not ice

just sit and be
while the wind works its way into you
until your rage flickers out
and there’s a new space
between your ribs

I know what it’s like
to feel your heart mined out
set upon by pickaxes
swarmed by the rapacious
proving up on false claims
of their right to strip the world
of whatever life they like

and I know
how to lie still
every night
and stare unblinking
into quiet stillness
until my shoulders ease

it takes a long time
for the ore to lose its currency
the forest to gain a voice
and the scars to grow over
but you can see
all the little aspen now
their young leaves
fizzing with joy
reminding you
that evil subsides
when value systems
shift

poetry

granite for gold

granite for gold

the church plaza:
a square of stone squares
not belonging to
this bit of earth
waste rock quarried in China
fit only for ballast
to center a ship’s
weight in water
to protect the porcelain
and airy silks above

when the ships docked in Manila
men cast the cut blocks into the shallows
their heft no longer needed
displaced by the morbid weight,
the irredeemable burden of
bar upon bar, yes,
tons, a hold’s worth,
an obscene mass
of silver and gold
stripped from the soil and peoples
of the now naked New World