Sleeping by the Salish Sea

​GARDENING FOR A DAY JOB. MOVING MY BODY.
​OCCASIONAL LOOKS AT THE SEA'S SURFACE WHEN AT PROPERTY WITH OCEAN VIEW. I HAVE GOTTEN A SWOLLEN WRIST THIS WEEK. IT IS BIG AND PUFFY AND SORE. BODY WILL GET STRONGER. I FEEL STRONGER. WORKING OUTSIDE NOURISHES. I OBSERVE IN THE MIRROR THAT THERE ARE MORE FRECKLES ON MY FACE.

WORKING SILENTLY BESIDE KIND MEN. I TOOK DOWN FOUR 
TREE-SHRUBS THE OTHER DAY APOLOGIZING TO TREE SPIRITS.  MAKES ME SAD-TAKING DOWN THE TREES. A WILD GARDEN ONE DAY. WEEDING THOUGH: ACCOMPLISHMENT. STANDING ON STREET LATER I BEGAN TO WEED.

MIND TURNS INTO OTHER THINGS WHILE GARDENING. I START SEEING MIND.
OR I GET LOST IN THOUGHT AND INSPIRED: NEXT CAMPING TRIP, THE BOOK I AM READING "M Train", PATTI SMITH'S  NEW BOOK, WRITING, CREATIVITY, SOMETHING ELSE, SOMEONE ELSE, CREATIVITY.

HAVE  BEEN REFLECTING ON THESE WORDS BY PATTI SMITH: "I slip into a light yet lingering malaise. Not a depression, more like a fascination for melancholia, which I turn in my hand as if it were a small planet, streaked in shadow, impossibly blue". I AM DRAWN TO HER DISTANCING YET HOLDING SPACE FOR HER EMOTIONS...LOOKING AT THEM LIKE A "SMALL PLANET"...

AND THESE POEMS BY DON MCKAY AND WORDS BY PATTI SMITH...THEY ARE REALLY GOOD AND GOOD ISN'T THE RIGHT WORD BUT IT WILL SUFFICE FOR NOW.

I COME HOME, INTO ALONENESS. FOR THE TIME BEING ANY WAY. BUNDLED IN WARM BLANKETS. SURROUNDED BY PILLOWS, BOOKS AND MY LAPTOP. I LOOK FIRST FOR MCKAY POEMS. LISTEN TO HIS AUDIO. I THINK HOW I WANT TO SHARE A POEM. SOMETHING OF BEAUTY. THEN I LOOK UP ONLINE FOR "POETRY IN VICTORIA" TO SEE IF THERE ARE ANY READINGS. POSSIBLY.  ON THE INTERNET I DISCOVER THAT A FEW DAYS AGO IT WAS "NATIONAL POETRY DAY" (UK). IT FEELS EVEN MORE FITTING TO SHARE A POEM. THE POEM BELOW IS FROM DON MCKAY.

(THE PHOTO ABOVE IS FROM MY FIRST CAMPING TRIP WITH MICHEAL DREBERT ON THE JUAN DE FUCA TRAIL, THE SALISH SEA IN 2014. HE TOOK THE PHOTO. I EDITED IT).

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Finger Pointing At The Moon

We come from a hidden ocean, and we go to an unknown ocean.
-Antonio Machado

Everything you think of has already happened
and been sung by the sea. We were hiking
along the coast, with the hush and boom of surf 
in our ears, on a trail so wet it was mostly 
washouts strung together, forcing us
to find fresh way around, teeter
and nimble, until I thought, yes
the real agenda of this so-called trail
is not to lead us through this sopping biomass
but into it, with the surf
as soundtrack. Everything you think, it sang,
​has already happened and been sung in long
confessional sighs and softly
crashing dactyls, wash, rinse,
wash, useless to resist. Each wave,
having travelled incognito through its ocean,
surges up to rush the rock, Homer was here, and perish,
famous and forgotten. On the beach
the back-drag clicks the stones and pebbles
on each other, a death rattle that is somehow soothing, somehow
​music, some drum kit from the far side of the blues
where loss begins to shuffle. It's O.K. to disappear. Off balance,
I'm trying to hop from stepping stone to stone
when I flash back forty years to my friend's
younger sister sitting on the boat,
trailing her fingers as we row out to the raft, how she gazes,
pouring herself into water as its depth
pours into her. I remember
​being embarrassed she'd been caught out
​having an inner life and rowed hard for the raft
where summer fun was waiting with its brawny cannonballs
​and swan dives. I think each memory is lit by its own small moon-a snowberry,
a mothball, a dime-which regulates its tides
and longings. Next time I am going to lift the oars
so we can watch the droplets fall back,
​hidden ocean into unknown ocean,
while we drift. I will need a word
to float there, some empty blue-green bottle
that has lost its label. When we lose the trail entirely,
or it feeds us to the rain forest,
​what will we be like? Probably not the Winter wren,
whose impossible song is the biography of Buddha,
then Mary Shelley, when your no-good Uncle Ray.
Not the Cat-tail Moss
which hangs in drapes and furs the fallen logs in lavish
sixties shag. I think we come here so our words
can fail us, get humbled by the stones, drown,
be lost forever, then come back
as beach glass, polished and anonymous,
​knowing everything. Knowing everything they
think of has already happened and been sung, 
in all its tongues and metres, and to no one,
by the sea.

-Don McKay

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​Wash-up from Japan

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Seagull poop rock, fallen tree.


Enroute
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