"Makings" by Gary Snyder

I watched my father’s friends

Roll cigarettes, when I was young

Leaning against our black tarpaper shack.

The wheatstraw grimy in their hands

Talking of cars and tools and jobs

Everybody out of work.

the quick flip back

And thin lick stick of the tongue,

And a twist, and a fingernail flare of match.

I watched and wished my overalls

Had hammer-slings like theirs.

The war and after the war

With jobs and money came,

My father lives in a big suburban home.

It seems like since the thirties

I’m the only one stayed poor.

It’s good to sit in the

Window of my shack,

Roll tan wheatstraw and tobacco

Round and smoke.

"Makings" by Gary Snyder from No Nature. © Pantheon Books 1992. 

"The Night Migrations" by Louise Gluck

"Night Reflections" Robert Kipness 1969

This is the moment when you see again

the red berries of the mountain ash

and in the dark sky

the birds’ night migrations.

It grieves me to think

the dead won’t see them-

these things we depend on,

they disappear.

What will the soul do for solace then?

I tell myself maybe it won’t need

these pleasures anymore;

maybe just not being is simply enough,

hard as that is to imagine.

"The Night Migrations" by Louise Glück from Averno. © Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006.

"Above Pate Valley" by Gary Snyder

Pictographs, Pate Valley, Yosemite National Park

We finished clearing the last

Section of trail by noon,

High on the ridge-side

Two thousand feet above the creek

Reached the pass, went on

Beyond the white pine groves,

Granite shoulders, to a small

Green meadow watered by the snow,

Edged with Aspen-sun

Straight high and blazing

But the air was cool.

Ate a cold fried trout in the

Trembling shadows. I spied

A glitter, and found a flake

Black volcanic glass-obsidian-

By a flower. Hands and knees

Pushing the Bear grass, thousands

Of arrowhead leavings over a

Hundred yards. Not one good

Head, just razor flakes

On a hill snowed all but summer,

A land of fat summer deer,

They came to camp. On their

Own trails. I followed my own

Trail here. Picked up the cold-drill,

Pick, singlejack, and sack

Of dynamite.

Ten thousand years.

"Above Pate Valley" by Gary Snyder from Riprap and Cold Mountain. © Shoemaker & Hoard Publishers, 2003.

"Out of the Stump Rot, Something" by Mary Oliver

Out of the stump rot

something

glides forward

that is not a rope,

unless a rope has eyes,

lips,

tongue like a smack of smoke,

body without shoulders.

Thus: the black snake

floating

over the leaves

of the old year

and down to the pond,

to the green just beginning

to fuzzle out of the earth,

also, like smoke.

If you like a prettiness,

don't come here.

Look at pictures instead,

or wait for the daffodils.

This is spring,

by the rattled pond, in the shambled woods,

as spring has always been

and will always be

no matter what we do

in the suburbs.

The matted fur,

the red blood,

the bats unshuttering

their terrible faces,

and black snake

gliding across the field

you think you own.

Long neck, long tail.

Tongue on fire.

Heart of stone.

"Out of the Stump Rot, Something" by Mary Oliver, from A Thousand Mornings, 2012.

"I Have Decided' by Mary Oliver

I have decided to find myself a home

in the mountains, somewhere high up

where one learns to live peacefully in

the cold and the silence. It's said that

in such a place certain revelations may

be discovered. That what the spirit

reaches for may be eventually felt, if not

exactly understood. Slowly, no doubt. I'm

not talking about a vacation.

Of course at the same time I mean to

stay exactly where I am.

Are you following me?

"I Have Decided" by Mary Oliver, from A Thousand Mornings, 2012. 

"Watching Sandhill Cranes" by William Stafford

Spirits among us have departed--friends,

relatives, neighbors: we can't find them.

If we search and call, the sky merely waits.

Then some day here come the cranes

planing in from cloud or mist--sharp,

lonely spears, awkwardly graceful.

They reach for the land; they stalk

the ploughed fields, not letting us near,

not quite our own, not quite the world's.

People go by and pull over to watch. They

peer and point and wonder. It is because

these travelers, these far wanderers,

plane down and yearn in a reaching

flight. They extend our life,

piercing through space to reappear

quietly, undeniably, where we are.

"Watching Sandhill Cranes" by William Stafford, from Even In Quiet Places. © Confluence Press, 1996.

"Geese" by Faith Shearin

"On Winter Winds" by Morten E. Solberg

A gaggle of geese return to our street each winter

while migrating from one place to another.

They arrive in January, around my husband’s birthday,

and I am surprised to find them behind our house,

honking like cab drivers in traffic. Most leave with

babies but one pair can’t manage to have any;

I’ve watched them sit for years on a wet nest of death,

warming unhappiness. It is only when the other

geese swim past them, proudly displaying

a line of live chicks, that they realize they have

failed again, their eggs silent beneath the love

of their feathers. My neighbors and I don’t agree

on much but we all watch these geese from our

windows, with binoculars sometimes, our breakfast

growing cold on the table. We wish the unsuccessful

ones would have a season of luck, their eggs healthy

and well placed, for each of us has known the pleasure

of spring, the way it feels for something closed

to open: the soft, heavenly weather of arrival.

"Geese" by Faith Shearin from Moving the Piano. © Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2011.

"Winter Grace" by Patricia Fargnoli

"Aurora Borealis"

Hand-lifted woodblock print by Eric K. Nolan.

If you have seen the snow

under the lamppost

piled up like a white beaver hat on the picnic table

or somewhere slowly falling

into the brook

to be swallowed by water,

then you have seen beauty

and know it for its transience.

And if you have gone out in the snow

for only the pleasure

of walking barely protected

from the galaxies,

the flakes settling on your parka

like the dust from just-born stars,

the cold waking you

as if from long sleeping,

then you can understand

how, more often than not,

truth is found in silence,

how the natural world comes to you

if you go out to meet it,

its icy ditches filled with dead weeds,

its vacant birdhouses, and dens

full of the sleeping.

But this is the slowed-down season

held fast by darkness

and if no one comes to keep you company

then keep watch over; your own solitude.

In that stillness, you will learn

with your whole body

the significance of cold

and the night,

which is otherwise always eluding you.

"Winter Grace" by Patricia Fargnoli, from Winter. © Hobblebush Books, 2013. 

"Sonnet in the Shape of a Potted Christmas Tree" by George Starbuck

* O fury- bedecked! O glitter-torn! Let the wild wind erect bonbonbonanzas; junipers affect frostyfreeze turbans; iciclestuff adorn all cuckolded creation in a madcap crown of horn! It’s a new day; no scapegrace of a sect tidying up the ashtrays playing Daughter-in-Law Elect; bells! bibelots! popsicle cigars! shatter the glassware! a son born now now while ox and ass and infant lie together as poor creatures will and tears of her exertion still cling in the spent girl’s eye and a great firework in the sky drifts to the western hill.

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George Starbuck, “Sonnet in the Shape of a Potted Christmas Tree” from The Works: Poems Selected from Five Decades.

Copyright © 2003 by the University of Alabama Press.

"Winter-Time" by Robert Louis Stevenson

"Winter-Time" illustration from A Child's Garden of Verses,

by Ethel Mars and Maud Hunt Squire.

Late lies the wintry sun a-bed,

A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;

Blinks but an hour or two; and then,

A blood-red orange, sets again.

Before the stars have left the skies,

At morning in the dark I rise;

Ans shivering in my nakedness,

By the cold candle, bathe and dress.

Close by the jolly fire I sit

To warm my frozen bones a bit;

Or with a reindeer-sled, explore

The colder countries round the door.

When to go out, my nurse doth wrap

Me in my comforter and cap;

The cold wind burns my face, and blows

Its frosty pepper up my nose.

Black are my steps on silver sod;

Thick blows my frosty breath abroad;

And tree and house, and hill and lake,

Are frosted like a wedding cake.

From A Child's Garden of Verses, first published in 1902.

"Love for Other Things" by Tom Hennen

It’s easy to love a deer

But try to care about bugs and scrawny trees

Love the puddle of lukewarm water

From last week’s rain.

Leave the mountains alone for now.

Also the clear lakes surrounded by pines.

People are lined up to admire them.

Get close to the things that slide away in the dark.

Be grateful even for the boredom

That sometimes seems to involve the whole world.

Think of the frost

That will crack our bones eventually.

"Love for Other Things" by Tom Hennen, from Darkness Sticks to Everything. © Copper Canyon Press, 2013. 

"At the Beginning of Winter" by Tom Hennen

"Ice Dawn" Linocut by William Hayes

In the shallows of the river

After one o' clock in the afternoon

Ice still

An eighth of an inch thick.

Night never disappears completely

But moves among the shadows

On the bank

Like a glimpse of fur.

Meanwhile

Trees

Grass

Flies and spiderwebs

Appear alone in the flat air.

The naked aspens stand like children

Waiting to be baptized

And the goldenrod too is stripped down

To its bare stalk

In the cold

Even my thoughts

Have lost their foliage.

"At the Beginning of Winter" by Tom Hennen, from Looking Into The Weather. © Westerheim Press, 1983.

"This Winter Worse Than Most" by Madelyne Camrud

"Twilight" Anna Syperek

At night I awaken and listen

to the house creak, its boards sharpening

in the cold. Days we stay inside,

looking out the window,

and wonder at a world so deep

into temperature. A nuthatch

tweaks thistle seed from a feeder

suction-cupped to the pane.

In moments like this spent close to glass,

how understandable my life is,

inside the heavy ribs of my navy sweater.

I watch the small bird rise

and light on a high branch.

"This Winter Worse than Most" by Madelyne Camrud, from Oddly Beautiful. © New Rivers Press, 2013.

"Report from the West" by Tom Hennen

"Tetons from Signal Mountain" by Ansel Adams, 1930's

Snow is falling west of here. The mountains have more than a

foot of it. I see the early morning sky dark as night. I won't lis-

ten to the weather report. I'll let the question of snow hang.

Answers only dull the senses. Even answers that are right often

make what they explain uninteresting. In nature the answers

are always changing. Rain to snow, for instance. Nature can

let the mysterious things alone—wet leaves plastered to tree

trunks, the intricate design of fish guts. The way we don't fall

off the earth at night when we look up at the North Star. The

way we know this may not always be so. The way our dizziness

makes us grab the long grass, hanging by our fingertips on the

edge of infinity.

"Report from the West" by Tom Hennen, from Darkness Sticks to Everything. © Copper Canyon Press, 2013.

"I Believe" by Jim Harrison

I believe in steep drop-offs, the thunderstorm across the lake

in 1949, cold winds, empty swimming pools,

the overgrown path to the creek, raw garlic,

used tires, taverns, saloons, bars, gallons of red wine,

abandoned farmhouses, stunted lilac groves,

gravel roads that end, brush piles, thickets, girls

who haven’t quite gone totally wild, river eddies,

leaky wooden boats, the smell of used engine oil,

turbulent rivers, lakes without cottages lost in the woods,

the primrose growing out of a cow skull, the thousands

of birds I’ve talked to all of my life, the dogs

that talked back, the Chihuahuan ravens that follow

me on long walks. The rattler escaping the cold hose,

the fluttering unknown gods that I nearly see

from the left corner of my blind eye, struggling

to stay alive in a world that grinds them underfoot.

--from In Search of Small Gods, Copper Canyon Press, 2010

"When I Was Seven" by Liane Ellison Norman

Liverpool, England during the Blitz.

When I Was Seven

the war in Europe moved in on the domed

wooden radio with its gothic front where 

Let's Pretend arrived every Saturday, brought 

to us by Uncle Bill and Cream O' Wheat. 

Nathalie and I conspired to send a bomb 

to Hitler hidden in a bouquet of wild flowers, 

or better, in a jar of mayonnaise: either bomb 

or mayo would kill him. I built cities 

out of dominoes where Hitler lived 

and bombed them flat with other dominoes, 

but he hid under the couch and I fled onto it

so he couldn't grab me by the ankles.

"When I Was Seven" by Liane Ellison Norman,
from Breathing the West: Great Basin Poems. © Bottom Dog Press, 2012. 

Three Poems by Victor H. Bausch

Draft Notice 3 May 1966

Late afternoon. Friday.
Sacramento simmers
in hundred degree heat.
Mom greets me,
grim news in her voice,

a sorrow I'd heard
a couple months before
at my father's funeral:
the somber sadness from which
she'd never recovered.

For those fleeting mercurial moments
between life and beyond
I'd held dad in my arms.
Heard his death rattle.
Became the man of the house,

rode in an ambulance,
called a Catholic priest,
dealt with the nightmare.
I see the envelope lying
on the hallway table

shrouded in a winding sheet
bearing my name.
I hear the faint sound
of war drums beating,
imagine my mother sobbing

beside her son's coffin.
The fire and smoke of my life
rise higher and higher.
My fate, a booby trap, detonates,
destroys what's left of my fragile world.

Civil War of the Soul

You keep asking the same question
over and over
to those who will not listen:

If it wasn't a civil war,
then why were we fighting
men, women, and children?

Like Kerouac on the road,
a hobo riding the rails,
a saint in search of the Grail,
you separate reality from fantasy,
select Fellini as your point man,
cross over life's invisible line of demarcation,
and remove your Rosencrantz and Guildenstern doubt.

For years you've looked for Viet Nam
after Viet Nam
in the drugs you took
in the alcohol you consumed
until you saw the lie
for what it was.

Now in your early fifties
you know how lemmings feel
going over the cliff,
know how pigs and cattle feel
when they're led down the chute,
know how young men feel
when they're cannon fodder
in another senseless war.

Left alone like a refugee
forced to choose
between two countries
you stave off sadness
and suicide
wrestle the demons
in this civil war of the soul.

What They Wanted

was my soul, my body, my mind.
Instead what they got
was a declaration
to wage war on the war.

In the Nam,
during my relationship
between the manipulated
and the manipulator,
I was nothing more
than U.S. Grade A American meat
used for some bureaucrat's political gain.

Now over thirty years later
in this war of no fronts,
an MIA in my own country,
I sleep lightly,
keep a knife nearby on the night stand,
continue to go on night patrols,
look for an alternative revenge.

Victor H. Bausch is a Reference Librarian, a Viet Nam veteran, a member of Veterans for Peace, and a member of the National Writers Union, Local 7, Santa Cruz/Monterey.

"Moon" by Frederick Smock

The day lengthens, 

the old earth tips its hat 

to the moon.

The changeful moon 

goes through many phases, 

even in a single night, 

though it is the same 

moon as ever, we know this. 

We are the changes.

"Moon" by Frederick Smock, from The Bounteous World. © Broadstone Brooks, 2013.

"Island Cities" by John Updike

You see them from airplanes, nameless green islands 

in the oceanic, rectilinear plains, 

twenty or thirty blocks, compact, but with 

everything needed visibly in place—

the high-school playing fields, the swatch of park 

along the crooked river, the feeder highways,

the main drag like a zipper, outlying malls 

sliced from dirt-colored cakes of plowed farmland.

Small lives, we think—pat, flat—in such tight grids. 

But, much like brains with every crease CAT-scanned, 

these cities keep their secrets: vagaries 

of the spirit, groundwater that floods 

the nearby quarries and turns them skyey blue, 

dewdrops of longing, jewels, boxed in these blocks.

"Island Cities" by John Updike, from Americana: And Other Poems. © Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.

"Late September on the Russian River" by John E. Smelcer

"An Autumnal Sunset On the Russian River" by William Keith, 1878

The trees turn, suddenly,

as dawn rolls up what night unwound--

their slender necks

like tundra swans in shallow ponds.

There is no comforting chill

in the gray air,

only a screed of birds

scrawled on a bare sky.

Fog arrives in the narrow valley,

gray wings cupped like snow geese

landing between deserted stars

in morning's porcelain light.

A trout waves in a shadow

across smooth stone,

and while I watch, a bear--sleek and black--

crosses the river and fades off winterward.