Without You, This Valley Is Immense (Poetry, Bob Dylan & George Harrison)

Without you, this valley is immense
and unbearably vacant.  Yet, I take
the long way home because
I fear the void that waits
with a cat, a rabbit,
two dogs, five fish
and six chickens
to jump
all over
me.

I go slow
down past
the dunes
and then
the water
deep
below the
surface
feeding
the thorn-
thicket
of Russian
Olives,

the black

mass
of the basalt flow
heavy in the
distance,
a scab
where
earth
broke
open
hot & living.

I never want a pain like that—

where to pulse and throb
and bleed molten rock
is the only way to sustain
against erosion at a profound level,
life always waiting to be
engulfed
by the sea.

No, an island

is no more the life
for me.

The dogs rush out to see me.

They too hate the house without you.
I feed the chickens; the dogs take a crap.
We go in.  Bunny Boy lets
me know he too has been alone
and wants attention.

Perhaps the fish

swim in bliss
oblivious
to this house
ceasing to be home.

I’m about to settle

into blue or fade
to sepia tone
when Lloyd shows
up & I’m glad
together we can hate
Republicans
until you get
home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unorganized Reflections on Snow and Walking, Part II: Light from a Coleman Lantern on Lacquered Knotty Pine Walls

What was left of the barnyard in 2006.  Our house is now just off to the right.

AccuWeather says that it’s 29 degrees Fahrenheit outside, but I don’t believe it.  I know the temperature of cold around here, and it’s much colder than that outside—probably nineteen or twenty.  I felt it very sharply when I went outside to feed the chickens, and again when I went to look for an extension cord to hook up their heat lamp. 

I didn’t notice the moon, but the dry cold felt just like on those moonlit nights long ago when we’d all pile in the old Ford Falcon with the plastic duck-taped over the triangular vent window.   If there was much snow, we’d park at the single-wide trailer and walk up the rocky lane above the Dugway, where Canyon Road below dropped off the alluvial fan and cut down into the river bottom.

Let’s say it’s such a night, the sun sinking into the pink, misty air to the west.  Dad pulls just beyond the driveway to the trailer, which is semi-packed by the renters.  Mom, I, Muff (our dog) and Wilbur (our pig) head up the deep snow of the road, a great round blue hump up the center, a slanting wood gate in front.  The snow is deep and Muff moves in great playful jumps, exiting and reentering the snow somewhat like a dolphin at sea.  Wilbur just plows ahead, his nose to the ground, snorting as he goes.  I pull my green toboggan sled behind us, which is loaded with a pot of chili and a pan of corn bread.  The snow is deep and soft and the sled doesn’t pull easy.  Several times I have to lift up and yank it.

The van stuck in 2006.  Marci and the boys stand about where Dada always parked.
 

Dad has gone back the other way, to the barnyard, to feed the animals, and will catch up to us later.   At the gate, I undo a chain and try to open it.  It doesn’t open easy.  I pull enough so that I can squeeze through.  Then I lift up and push as if I were pushing a stuck car.  It slants forward and then gives all at once.  I fear I will fly forward and over it and land on my face, but I don’t.  It’s still not open, but it’s wide enough to get the sled through.

Mom shines the light ahead and I follow.  We don’t talk too much.  She has an Eskimo styled coat the creates a narrow tube around her face—just enough space to see and breathe, so talking is not easy as the sound gets lost inside the furry tunnel.  I don’t have such a coat, but don’t talk too much either.  Pulling the sled is hard and I’m winded.  Because of the workout, I’m sweating, even though I’m a bit cold.  I’m hot in my coat, especially my head, but my legs are cold and my hands are numb even with gloves.

There is still a pink horizon.  We see the silhouette of Dad cutting across the hay field to meet us, and he does, just below the pond.  He finds the portion of the fence where there is a wooden X and rail made out of Juniper as it is easier to cross over there than at the unsupported strands of barbed wire.  King, our steer, has followed him.  We stop and pet the King as Dad hops over the fence.  No longer moving, we talk for a bit, before moving on.

Although there is still quite a bit of light on top, the path down through the woods to the Cabin is dark and sheltered, the path narrow, with low, snow-loaded branches waiting to reach out and grab you.  We park the sled. Dad carries the big pot of chili; Mom carries the cornbread; and I, armed with the flashlight, lead the way.   Well, sort of.  Muff leaps out in front.  Wilbur, by now is bringing up the rear, glad to walk in the path.  I can hear him snort behind.

About half way down the hill, we startle some deer, which go crashing off to the right.  That in turn startles Mom, who inhales and screams simultaneously and then bursts into laughter.

Dad says, “Well, you know that’s going to happen.”

“I can’t help it Joe, I just can’t help it; it gets me every time.”

It gets Muff too.  He’s nowhere in sight.  He’s darted off into the night, hot on the trail of a small herd of deer.

Finally, we make it to the cabin.  There is a clearing here, but no moonlight yet, so we’re not really aware of it other than that we can sort of make out of the snow-loaded roof of the cabin, a deep blue in the very last of the day light.  The canyon floor is dark, even in the clearing, and only the flashlight shows the way.

The cabin, built in 1978, as viewed last spring with the original roof.  It'll need shingles soon.

 

We put everything on the porch.  I open the door and Dad goes in, grabs the lantern that is hanging from a hook in balcony, brings it out on the porch and lights it.

After it is hissing good, we go in, even Wilbur.  Muff is still off somewhere.  Dad hangs the lantern on the nail, my favorite part. Light spreads out from the hissing center and warms the lacquered knotty pine walls, which look like an orange Tootsie Pop as you approach the Tootsie center.

Unorganized Reflections on Snow and Walking, Part I: Narrative Heading Towards Dry Creek (dogs, deer, hamsters, runt pigs and a small-town health-food store)

View of the chicken coup from the front walk.

 

It is the morning after the first snow of the season.  I sit in my recliner and look out the glass door.  There’s probably three inches on the patio table, but only an inch or two on the ground.  It is always like that with the first snow.  The ground retains its heat and melts most of the snow away.  It is beautiful anyway.  I wish I could go walking, but I don’t much of that these days.

 Walking and snow have always been a part of my life.  When I was young and we lived in town, and there was snow and a full moon, Dad would want to drive up to Dry Creek to burn the stacks of dead juniper left from the railing that took place prior to us purchasing the property. 

After school, he’d come home and tell Mom to cook up a big pot of chili.  We’d gather the two dogs, Lady and Muff, both Pomeranian mixes.  Lady, a mixture of Pomeranian and Chihuahua, was slender and dainty like a deer.   She even had the personality of a doe.  She was Dad’s dog, and pretty much terrified of everyone else.   The slightest unexpected movement would set her prancing across the room for the shelter of the legs of a table or chair.  Muff, a mixture of Pomeranian and Terrier, was short, stocky, and fearless.  He ran all over town, biting the wheels of cars and semi-trucks as he raced through the streets with wild abandon.  He lost his life, telling a German Shepherd he better not even dare step into our yard.  But he had his soft side.  He loved hamsters.  I had a couple.  And he loved mine.  Not to eat, but as pets.  I’d also walk him downtown (back then there actually was one) to the health food store, which oddly enough sold vitamins, Asian food, soft-serve yogurt and small pets, such as hamsters and ferrets.  I’d bring Muff inside and walk him up and down the small aisle and he’d sit up in front of each cage, begging to get a hamster out to meet him.

But I digress.  This post was to be about snow, and to snow we will get.  We’d all climb in the old Ford Falcon, which was old even back then.  The one window was busted out and had plastic taped over it.  Fortunately, for us, Dad had a weird accounting system.  He didn’t have enough money to purchase a new automobile, but he did have enough go in with two friends and buy Dry Creek.  That single decision will affect generations.  It is why, right now, I can sit almost housebound, and look out the sliding glass window at a stretch of untamed white.  I glance now and then for the sight of deer or turkey.  So far, nothing, but it will not stay like that.  Without question, I will see deer today without even trying.  They are as much a part of my life as subways are to a residence of New York City, as elevated trains are to  a residence of Chicago.

 

A similar snow storm from last year viewed from our sliding glass door.

I think, perhaps, deer are the reason Dad purchased Dry Creek.  Everything else was a justification.  Yes, it did have an alfalfa field then, but due to lack of water, we only got two crops (instead of the normal three or four).  And yes, there was a barn yard, and we did have animals—chickens, pigs, sheep and one steer.  But those were but excuses.

A herd of deer right out the front door--a daily sight October through May.

The real reason to hold the property was to watch deer in the moonlight.   That is why the dogs, the chili and the family were in the car, headed up Canyon Road. Oh, and the pigs.  I forgot the pigs.  We had two pet ones.  I can’t remember how many farm ones, maybe three or four.  Both the pets were runts.  Wilber was the eldest of the two.  He was born small and his mother ostracized him.  Dad rescued him and brought him home to be bottle fed.  Wilbur was soon up and growing, full of spunk.  His favorite activity in the summer was taking his snout, scooping up the neighborhood dogs, and tossing them.  Surprisingly, the neighborhood dogs liked it too.   There’d be four or five dogs on the front lawn waiting to be tossed.

The second runt remained a runt until the day she died.  She simply didn’t grow.  She was healthy, but tiny.  I wouldn’t believe it either, if I didn’t know better.  Dad called her Oinka.  She was the size of a toy poodle and he treated her like a toy poodle.  He took her everywhere, even up north, to Salt Lake, the big city.  He carried her around in a box.  He’d take her into K-mart or wherever.  He’d get away with it by telling people she was a new breed of dog called a Piggle.  Again, I wouldn’t believe it if I were not there. 

But I don’t think Oinka ever made the moonlight-snow-and-deer excursions.  Her life was happy, but short.  She died during the summer, sleeping in her box of the front porch while Dad worked in the front yard.  The sun moved and he didn’t notice.  She had a stroke.  For a week she could only walk backwards and then she died.  He was heartbroken.

So, if memory serves me right, Oinka was not there.  Lady, either.  She too had died.  We’d planted a baby spruce down by the cabin in memory of her.  So, I guess, it wasn’t two dogs, just one dog and a pig, a pot of chili, and Mom, Dad and I headed up Canyon Road towards the snow, the moon, the deer, the bonfire and all that glory.

But, that will have to wait until next time.  Sometimes life is so rich that it can’t be reduced to something neat and trim, like a plotted, suburban lawn, but must stretch on, undefined, untamed as the snowy Juniper flats of Dry Creek.

 

Galveston, November, 1947 ("Heartaches" by Harry James and Marion Morgan; "Wanderlust" by Paul McCartney)

Glory

This is the second poem in a series of linked-poems I plan to write in Glory, a novel-in-verse based loosely on Visions of Glory by John Pontius, a spiritual account of “Spencer,” an unidentified individual who shared his visionary experience with Pontius.  Other than noting that Spencer's father killed someone while driving under the influence as a teen, that he was sent to war, that he married and left Spencer's mother, Pontius does not provide many details here.  This allowed me free reign of my imagination.  I thought, Where would a returning soldier be likely to end up?   Galveston.  Then, I picked a likely year.  When I typed in "Galveston, 1947" to get a feel for the place and time, I found '47 was no ordinary year for the big bay.  But, I didn't know how to finish the poem.  Then, as is often the case, two borrowed lines came to me--"light out wanderlust / head us out to sea"--that my mind heard wrong in order to fit the poem:  "light up wanderlust / head out to sea".    
   

Galveston, November, 1947 

It was gray day along the Strand

when my mother met my father.
She didn’t see the metaphor coming
even after they crossed the causeway
in his new Series 62 convertible Cadillac
to see the ruins of Texas City,

and later sitting on the bright red hood,

eating cheese and cucumber sandwiches
amongst the lingering empty car hulls
in a vacated parking lot a quarter mile from
the explosion.  It was romantic
holding each other fiercely
against the wind amongst twisted, ash-covered
metal exoskeletons.

My father skirted the war, his youth
(and no doubt the drunken episode
in Farmington, Utah that led to his sentence),
but reveled to recover
the day the Grandcamp, still moored at dock,
rocked Galveston Bay.

Mother sat transfixed by the thick,
short wave of his bangs
casting a thin, black shadow
across his brow, adding mystery
and excitement to details he rattled off
with the passion of a poet:

There I was, amongst falling bales of burning twain.
Hell, the anchor was hurled across the entire city.
Two sightseeing planes had their wings torn off.
Even in Galveston blokes were knocked to their knees,
in Houston windows shattered.  They even say
the shock wave shook Louisiana.
Hell, Monsanto bloody Chemical Company
never paid me enough anyway.
Damn well deserve to be wiped away.

And over the radio, came a warning,

from Harry James and Marion Morgan--

Heartaches
Heartaches
My loving you meant only heartaches...

 

But the daughter of a preacher,
my mother just couldn't hear it.
Light up wanderlust,
head us out to sea.

 

1954: First Death & the Birth of the Transistor Radio ("Hey There" by Rosemary Clooney)

Glory

This is the first poem in a series of linked-poems I plan to write in Glory, a novel-in-verse based loosely on Visions of Glory by John Pontius, a spiritual account of “Spencer,” an unidentified individual who shared his visionary experience with Pontius.  In this poem, I took details from two paragraphs of his and juxtaposed them with the invention of the transistor radio.  The coinciding of these two events (and the song) is purely the product of my imagination even though the accounts individually are fairly true to their sources.

1954:  First Death & the Birth of the Transistor Radio

I was born dead

the day the transistor radio
came out: October 18, 1954.

The love child of Regency Division

of Industrial Development
Engineering Associates and
Texas Instruments was olive.
My skin was blue-black.

The doctor took one look at me

and handed me to one of four nurses.
An internal Texas Instruments Information
Bulletin stated TI-ers could be “justly proud”
of creating a tiny transistor cheaply enough
to replace tubes.   I too was tiny,
but unlike the radio, I had no signal.

The nurse wrapped me in newspaper

and placed me in a stainless steel sink.

At 6 feet, 6 inches, Jack St. Clair Kilby stood tall,

the proud daddy of the first integrated circuit.
My mother was bleeding badly
when they told her I was still born.
She was relieved.  She didn’t want me.

But somewhere there was a signal.

I was on some frequency.
The nurse picked me up to dispose of me
and found me struggling to breath.

Low clouds hung along the Wasatch Front.

I was driven to Primary Children’s Hospital.

My mother was told “I had pinked up”. 
On the radio, Rosemary Clooney sang,

Hey there you on that high flyin cloud
though he won't throw a crumb to you
you think someday he'll come to you
better forget him, him with his nose in the air
he has you dancin on a string...

 

To my mother, it could have been about my father,

but more likely a no-good, absent God.