Poetry is the tongue of our nature spirit.
I am going to tell you some poems here
poems about rivers
about edges and currents,
immersion and emergence
of coming and going
We’ve come here each flowing
out of the rivers of our own pasts
And today we’ve come together
through pine and laurel,
oak and hickory, poplar and hemlock
out of time and its river
to this clear and present edge of here and now.
It is a river liquid and mercurial
alive and breathing
the great snake of it sliding by us
elastic, connective, extensive
the pattern of it made new in every moment.
Am I talking about the river, or of us?
The film maker Jean Luc-Godard says “ Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret selves.”
I reply - Nature attracts us by what it reveals of our most secret selves.
I say the river draws us to her by what she reveals of our own secret flowing selves.
We are not lost here:
LOST by David Wagoner
"Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you. "
A RIVER RUNS THROUGH THIS
(written for you today)
A river runs through this
Blacksnake sliding under Jewelweed
flushing Robin surprising Blue Jay
screeching over mirror striding Water Spider
reflecting wheeling Red Tailed Hawk calling:
where are you where are you to Lizard
scrambling across old barn wood parched in the sun
gliding over Otter slipping from rock into water
flashing by Golden Shiner scurrying toward Sculpin
nuzzling mud beneath silver racing Gilt Darter
darting past Bloodroot stemming into whitened flower
from the moss blanketed bank shouldering
into the stream as rainbowing Kingfisher
alights and makes the heart stop
and the river runs through it.
A river runs through this
a poem where I am swimming around you
composing dreams about rivers
to all of you swimming about me
who are dreaming poems about yourselves
and I am coming to a place and don’t have the words
and someone else tells me the next one
and so it goes, generous,
the swimming and the dreaming and the telling
and the river runs through it
(written for you today)
A river runs through this
Blacksnake sliding under Jewelweed
flushing Robin surprising Blue Jay
screeching over mirror striding Water Spider
reflecting wheeling Red Tailed Hawk calling:
where are you where are you to Lizard
scrambling across old barn wood parched in the sun
gliding over Otter slipping from rock into water
flashing by Golden Shiner scurrying toward Sculpin
nuzzling mud beneath silver racing Gilt Darter
darting past Bloodroot stemming into whitened flower
from the moss blanketed bank shouldering
into the stream as rainbowing Kingfisher
alights and makes the heart stop
and the river runs through it.
A river runs through this
a poem where I am swimming around you
composing dreams about rivers
to all of you swimming about me
who are dreaming poems about yourselves
and I am coming to a place and don’t have the words
and someone else tells me the next one
and so it goes, generous,
the swimming and the dreaming and the telling
and the river runs through it
you and me,
this river runs through us.
TRINITY
1.
This stream
is right here somewhere where I am ten
and running naked under the old oaks
along Trinity River.
2.
And this one
flows in my blood
with a generosity I can
in no way account for now.
3.
And this one
like a breath is slow
and long, smooth and deep,
even and balanced by that other,
the heart still flung open.
Honor Woodard’s poem (7/14/09)
"the river flows
threads drift on the surface
what lies beneath
who knows
the river carries on
and carries with it
all things within
going down
toward the sea
all things answering
gravity’s pull
fighting or flowing
in the current
all things answer
gravity’s pull
and the river flows on
to the sea"
GOING TO THE WATER
by Jeff Davis from his book: NatureSThe water falls the rain
falls and breaks
the order of words
to penetrate
thought's interstices
and wash the rivulets
and the mind
thinking of them
clear again, a moment,
to the Unknown:
Down stream
another juncture of
water to
waters
uncover the
cold rock, strip
dirt off down to nets
of roots hold laurel,
oak, and hemlock
tight and live:
Leaves drop in
and are carried off,
limbs are taken off to rot:
And the water leaves
what holds
deep to what
the strong earth
itself
through all
uplift and turmoil
does not unfold.
(for more on Jeff Davis' poetry go to: Jeff Davis
James Dickey’s
INSIDE THE RIVER
Dark, deeply. A red.
All levels moving
A given surface.
Break this. Step down.
Follow your right
Foot nakedly in
To another body.
Put on the river
Like a fleeing coat,
A garment of motion,
Tremendous, immortal.
Find a still root
To hold you in it.
Let the flowing create
A new, inner being;
As the source in the mountain
Gives water in pulses,
These can be felt at
The heart of the current.
And here it is only
One wandering step
Forth, to the sea.
Your freed hair floating
Out of your brain,
Wait for a coming
And swimming idea.
Live like the dead
In their flying feeling.
Loom as a ghost
When life pours through it.
Crouch in the secret
Released underground
With the earth of the fields
All around you, gone
Into purposeful grains
That stream like dust
In a holy hallway.
Weight more changed
Than that of one
Now being born,
Let go the root.
Move with the world
As the deep dead move,
Opposed to nothing.
Release. Enter the sea
Like a winding wind.
No. Rise. Draw breath.
Sing. See no one.
As we came down the trail, did you notice the springssqueezing out of rock, slipping over granite slabs
flushing into clattering branches under laurel
knotting strand by strand through stands of hemlock
weaving into creeks that become the River?
ON A DAY, STILL
On a day still
as sleeping cats, among
a stand of pines, one cracks
near its base and falls
against another.
No fault
of weather or storm,
just a failing within -
a fissure running six feet up
and all the tissue there
collapsing like a knee blown out.
In a moment
drawn out so long
it too is stilled,
the broken one leans
against another
as if it stumbled
in some crowd going to a game
and the others
not taking notice, but
kindly accept to offer
a shoulder to a stranger.
One against another,
no one speaking -
sometimes it’s all we’ve got,
each of the other.
Six months later,
coming down the trail
this moment is still here
and now, lifted out of a spring
as a handful of water
is lifted out of time.
Listen!
Do you hear that bird?
LESSON #1: HOW TO LISTEN TO A BIRD SING
Take off all
your clothed and
clammy thoughts.
Sit awhile.
Make nothing up
between the intervals of silence,
but listen to them.
Between each breath
is a song you’ve forgotten,
is always calling us
to gather to this wild
and shocking world.
This music happens to us
before we can ever think about it
this song happens in us
before we can ever say it’s impossible
to listen before we speak
of nothing or everything.
These mountains are daily wrapped in mystery and fact:
the light, the dark, the round of seasons,
the time of deep past, deep present, deep future -
these all speak to us,
the mists alternately hiding and revealing -
the steep slopes, the shaded coves, the bright rivers,
our lives and our work.
We have to come to the river. The Cherokee who lived here would come many mornings “Going to Water” (“a-ma Da ye si ” in Cherokee). It was a daily sacred cleansing and purifying ritual.
DAWN
Dawn,
with lighted fingers
stitches a delicate thread
an amber line of ridge against the night
- then begins
to hem
the greening march of trees
down along the still dark creek
- and begins
to mend
out of what might have been
this day together
- once again
such prescient
marvelous
needlework!
- surely sewn
we together
out of wonder
this world.
OUR BREATHS EACH TIME
Our breaths each time
reach out and come back.
They must so love the world
they always go back
for more.
Or perhaps I’ve gotten this
all wrong. This breath’s
not ours at all, but the world’s.
The world’s searching deep
into our opened chest
and then pulling back
for more.
This tide,
in its gravity of care
is drawing us on forever.
This river, these mountains, we’ve come to think of them these days as all so fragile. Some of this reflects our very human fears about our own fragility. But some of it is very real. You only have to look north a few hundred miles to see them removing the tops of whole mountains for the coal, or see the plans for cutting an interstate highway through the mountains of Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee. You only have to look at our own county here, Rabun. Here hundreds of citizens worked on a comprehensive plan to insure the quality of life for our children and grandchildren, but the County Commission could only see trees (and certainly there were enough of them) and profits to be made on real estate. So they put it in a drawer.
Perhaps we can’t save this river and these mountains without first saving ourselves in some way. John Muir said, when they wanted to flood Hech-Hechy in the Yosemite, that “What is dollared can’t be saved.” I think it will take something else. Some way to re-inhabit this world by coming to it with open hands in respect.
WHAT THEY WANTED
The teacher asked them
to draw what they wanted.
The commissioner's son drew streets,
paved and straight and bright.
The developer's son drew signs
covering the hillsides with crisp dollar bills.
The lakehouse owner's son drew mansions
in a shimmering necklace around the lake.
The environmentalist's son drew a river
bobbing with kayaks and laughter.
The carpenter's son drew houses,
board upon board, high enough to reach the sun.
The fatherless daughter drew just one
great mountain, like two hands
joined in prayer,
opening in praise.
LISTEN!
Listen!
Will the world be still
after we depart?
Will there be cold? Will there be sweetness?
Will the birds still talk about
what we never learned to hear?
Or will it all be forgotten, or forgiven,
or will it just be still?
Listen!
Our children are coming and we are going.
It’s late, but listen!
If we fail to listen
and then to tell them,
the rivers and the mountains
will stop breathing in
their fullness. They’ll stop whispering
their care and advice, and there will be nothing
for our children to hear
but their nightmares.
WILL YOU BE THE ONE?
for Honor and RobinetteWill you be the one
to leave a sign in the ground
for those who come after to find
that we too lived
and loved, cried and died,
fighting with ourselves and each other
to the end of us
and that one of the least of us
left this coin.
This last year my dear neighbor Honor Woodard taught me to appreciate how dreams are not part of some separate world. Each week we used to meet in a dream circle to tell our dreams. Often when it came my turn I would say “I had this poem to tell you” not realizing I had replaced the word “dream” with “poem”. Honor would point this out, and gradually I came to embrace this porous sense of what the world is made of, and that we are made of -(the same old star stuff as everything else?)
WE ARE ALWAYS DREAMING
We are always dreaming,
the good life, the bad life,
the life not lived.
In our ceremonies
we mark our bodies
with the signs of our dreams:
flames and crosses and circles.
Wearing our dream marks
we carry our whole lives
into the country of our days.
We must do this - keep it up,
this dreaming into our waking country,
keep it going, keep it safe,
even into the desert of our selves.
WHAT’S NEEDED
What’s needed
is water
and dark
moving to a time
as slow as roots
in a well
where slivered fish
swim
in a dream
of knowing
not caught
but foreseen.
HOW TO LIVE A LIFE ON THE RIVER:
Reach out
beyond yourself so far
you have to let go
of the shore.
Gather in what happens here.
Then pull back
against the undertow
sit on the beach
and examine your hands.
Most days
you will only be left
with broken pieces of shell, flecks of mica,
the sands of rock and time
But sometimes
you will be left with fiery bits
of starlight.
These are yours.
So enter a river,
a poem, a church, a conversation
anywhere. Swim around
listen for the resonance
in the waves, for the motion
in the current.
Let each filament of river
weave into your breath.
Then say what happens here.
Know that we all are listening.
A river, a poem, a church, a conversation
even a breath
it’s all a great river. I’ll meet you there.
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