THE DOUBLE HELIX
Marine biologists tracking
pods of killer
whales in and out of Prince
William Sound
recognize them by their
dorsal fins and
by a flood of salmon scales
swirling up.
A moose and two calves
browse in twilight;
cow parsnip reeks along the
road to Fritz Creek.
What does not dissolve in
hindsight? The mind
tilts from starboard to
port, port to starboard,
but steadies on even keel.
Workmen stretch
an orange string to align
flagstone steps,
stretch two lime-green
strings to delineate
the thickness of wall.
Surveying stones
scattered on grass along
the ditch, I observe
the wall rise in an
irregular wave; and as
we dine at a red oval
table, discuss how
a diabetic homeopath
endures unremitting pain,
how clusters of oyster
mushrooms I forage
appear fresh but, when
sliced, reveal worms,
we lift and turn the
incidents until--
a line of dorsal fins
breaks water, blows
hang in air--we find their
true and living place.
What neither comes nor
goes? I try to converse
with a playwright who once
sat in Oppenheimer’s
chair; propped near a
table, nodding before
a color TV--within reach of
his right hand,
an oblong box of pills:
a.m., noon, p.m., night--
while a slurry of news
pours in, he struggles,
fails to string a single
sentence, yet, when
I stand, gazes point-blank,
extends an arm.
A line of yellow-groove
bamboo extends
along the backyard fence.
Yesterday we drove
into the Jemez Mountains,
cut shaggymanes
along forest road 144,
foraged among spruce
in mist and wavering rain;
and though you
found a site where someone
before us had cut
a bolete stipe and cap,
though you spotted,
on a rock, as we drove
past, a squirrel gnawing
another chunk of cèpe, we
found nothing but
reveled in the Douglas fir.
Look out, look in;
what percolates in the
dark? Clouds, rain;
we stretch and align
ourselves, become one.
Cries of glaucous-winged
gulls on the bay:
in the swirling light at
summer solstice,
I mark the plethora of
nature in a twenty-five
foot shift between low and
high tide lines;
a man casts from shore,
reels in small halibut;
red-faced cormorants nest
in a cliff side;
an otter lazes with head
above waves;
at low tide I wander among
squirting clams,
make crunching noises
stepping on shells,
flip a rock, find
nudibranch eggs along with
a gunnel fish; spot orange
and purple sea stars,
leather star, sculpin,
frilled anemones,
a single moon jelly
contracting and propelling
through water, worn crab
shells at the entrance
to an octopus den, mating
helmet crabs below
the tideline; but, before I
know it, the tide
swerves back, starts to
cover the far shelf
of exposed blue mussels;
gulls lift off;
sea cucumbers and green sea
urchins disappear
beneath lapping waves, and
my glimpse expires.
Skunks pass by a screen
door in the dark;
once they ravaged ripening
corn in our garden
and still crisscross us
because a retired
violinist used to feed
them. once a composer--
a killer whale spyhops near
a research vessel--
told a patron, “It’s fine
if you sleep with
my girlfriend,” though he
did not yet know
his out-of-town girlfriend
had already dumped
him for a software
engineer. We pick winesap,
braeburn, yellow delicious
apples in a neighbor’s
orchard, press them; and,
as cider collects
in plastic jugs while a few
yellow jackets sip,
I sense time ooze. In a
second I scramble
an egg, blink, scissor
string, smudge
a photograph with blue ink,
and the trigram
for water transforms into
fire: when a former
soldier testifies that
seeds contaminated
with plague were dumped
from airplanes
during the growing season,
a knife-edge runs
across my palms, but the
truth scalds, anneals.
Who fires at killer whales
to try to prevent
them from stripping
longlines of black cod?
You do not need to analyze
toxins in peregrine
falcons to ascertain if the
web is stretched
and stretched. In a Chimayo
orchard where
two horses lean over a
gate, two children
offer apples, while someone
in a stream casts,
and the line snakes,
glistens. Laughter
echoes from a table where
someone pours
tequila onto ice, and ice
crackles in a cup;
women slice sections of
apples and toss them
into a wheelbarrow. We do
not heed them
as we turn to each other
and effervesce:
are we here to unravel?
combust?
lightning the patch of
ground where we stand?
Although the passions that
torrent through
our bodies will one day
vanish like smoke--
these words spiral the
helix of living into smoke--
we embrace, rivet, inflame
to mortal beauty,
to yellow-gold bursting
through cottonwoods,
to morels sprouting through
charred ground.
And as sky darkens, absorbs
magpie nest,
green water tank, canales, pear, quince, slatted
wood fence, we tilt back
and forth: though
the time we breathe is
millenia when clocked
by a vibrating ray of
cesium atoms, seconds
when measured by Hyakutake
Comet--the tide
rushes over orange-tipped
nudibranchs; silt
plunges underwater into a
submarine canyon--
we mark snow on a flagstone
path dissolve.
DRINKING WINE
by T’ao Ch’ien
A green pine is in the east garden,
but the many grasses obscure it.
A frost wipes out all the other species,
and then I see its magnificent tall branches.
In a forest, men do not notice it, but
standing alone, it is a miracle.
I hang a jug of wine on a cold branch;
then stand back, and look again and again.
My life spins with dreams and illusions.
Why then be fastened to the world?
DEAD WATER
by Wen I-to
Here
is a ditch of hopelessly dead water.
A
cool breeze would not raise the slightest ripple on it.
You
might throw in some scraps of copper and rusty tins,
or
dump in as well the remains of your meal.
Perhaps
the green on copper will turn into emeralds,
or
the rust on tin will sprout a few peach blossoms.
Let
grease weave a layer of fine silk-gauze, and
mould
steam out a few red-glowing clouds.
Let
the dead water ferment into a ditch of green wine,
floating
with pearls of white foam;
but
the laughter of small pearls turning into large pearls
is
broken by spotted mosquitoes stealing the wine.
Thus
a ditch of hopelessly dead water
can
yet claim a bit of something bright.
And
if the frogs can’t endure the utter solitude,
let
the dead water burst into song.
Here
is a ditch of hopelessly dead water.
Here
beauty can never reside.
You
might as well let ugliness come and cultivate it,
and
see what kind of world comes out.