Clouds part as we leave.
Suddenly
we are blinded
by countless suns,
each reflected from one-sided
rock mirrors polished like shields
by eastwardly
migrating grit.

Thoughts of data and warm
roadhouse vanish,

and
we skip dazzled
through
a field
of stars.

Rocky Flats, Colorado, 1963

Scratch any scientist (or anyone else, for that matter) and most will reveal a longing for bedazzlement, or re-bedazzlement. This was one of those moments you live for.

Rocky Flats is not too far from Boulder, where I was a student of physical geography. It was often in the news in subsequent years as the (frequently protested)site of a Dow Chemical plant and atomic bomb construction activities. For years since the place has been the contentious topic of hazardous waste cleanup. Weep for the Earth.

On that long ago day when the sun came out, it was near biblical. Shields blazed and blinded. Turn around and face west, up toward the crest, and it looked like a normal, vast rocky field. The stones had been polished to perfection on their west sides (from which the wind is incessant). But their east sides were normal rough surfaces–no reflection, even during a morning sunrise.

Each facet of the crystal mediates
his thoughts and feelings
about himself, family, others.
He surveys the zeitgeist,
adjusts his attitudes,
offers a palette of caring
colors to relieve
the stress of others.
He believes this makes
the world a better
place.

Although the prospect
of death is worrisome,
his vague sense of Buddhism
and healthy constitution
allow him to hold such
thoughts at a distance.
He may still believe that he
will live
forever.

This is one of my many selves. He has a counterpart in a more childish, emotional side that desperately longs for everything to be OK. Both entities have a huge investment in avoiding basic fears and various primordial oozes. Fortunately, these are all embraced by yet another fellow who helps steady the ship with love, integration, and relationship.

Good grief.

Beyond attention, effortless airy
shadow inspects rock slides,
stubby grasses, dried
bluebells and asters.

Marmot monks,
stationed like signal fires,
rip the silence, lump
toward burrow holes.

Raptor vision,
swift shadow,
echoing whistles bring an urgent
scale to the land.
Forget pain in knees,
long day, heavy pack.
Breathe the distances,
find a place
to hide.

Quick!

I had been backpacking alone for several days in the northeast Olympic Mountains. On this, the final exhausting day, I was in a near trance when a red tail hawk changed me into an Olympic marmot.

The circles ponder
a long while.

Finally, one answers,
There’s no getting around it.
Just as birds learn
to make great sky-circles,
we’ll fall, and in falling, grow
wings.

(Epithalamium, August 7, 2004)

My daughter recently got married–a marvelous event in every way, full of love, community, and cheer. Even when such an event is splendid in most every way, it carries its challenges–such matters as the bittersweet passage of time, reflections of those present on how well or not so well they have handled their own relationships, and so on. Ariel handed me an additional challenge: to write a few lines to say at the wedding, including several necessary metaphors. Eventually what came was this little poem, with thanks to Rumi’s original image of sky-circles.

My skinny schoolmate, Judy Kay,
lived across the street, daughter
of a Southern Baptist minister.
Safe in the play boat we’d built
in her back yard, I suggested,
Let’s show each other.

Near the fo’c’sle, I pulled down
my jeans, stretched the top
of my white underwear briefs.
Her neck craned with interest.
In turn I hungrily looked
down her belly and saw
nothing. Where was it?

What are you doing?
Oh, no, her mother.
Go home and tell your parents
what you have done!

I ran
as never before
through an opening between worlds.
I ran as the spring breeze,
leaped hedges and fences.
Strong. Unlimited.
My U.S. Keds scarcely touched
the earth, my sweat light.

My circles of flight
led home. There, breathing
deeply, soaring less,
I became a boy again.

What happened? my mother asked.
–Nothing. Where is Daddy?–
Gone to cut switches
in case you’re not telling
the truth.

Thinking about this childhood episode recently, it occurred to me that I never knew (or thought to ask at the time or later, while my parents still lived) whether I was punished for the attempted peek or for lying, or both. Probably my parents didn’t know either. Another more recent insight has to do with the kensho experience the run became for me. In some ways that more than makes up for the vote against healthy sexuality lodged in my musculature by the severe whipping that followed.

Like an old cairn,
Schmitty pointed the way
through impassable terrains.
Use the power of the wedge,
he’d say, and I learned
to fell twisted trees.

The notched beam logs
rolled easily into place
atop the cabin walls.
Smile breaking my face, I tacked
a sprig of yew to the peak.
Then stood back
and just looked.

Good job!

I was astonished, even unbelieving when I first learned about the parbuckling technique. Building a log home was, I used to say, an experience in controlled terror. There was only so much money and time, nothing is standard in log construction, and I had very little experience. Every now and then I’d hit a snag that just stopped me.

One such time had to do with how to get large roof beams (purlins) up on top of a two and a half story log shell. I couldn’t afford a crane, and my back-to-the-land ethic refused to permit such a consideration in any case. Schmitty, a farmer, science/math teacher, Einstein afficianado, and man of the woods, came to my rescue any number of times. He had a certain Pythagorean elegance, and was a fine teacher.

The “sprig of yew” refers to a branch of the yew tree, the hardest of hardwoods in the Puget Sound lowlands. One of many pieces of lore about home building has it that placement of a strong branch on the peak of a new house confers strength and permanency to the structure. I’ve seen fir trees attached to the tops of new skyscrapers in downtown Seattle.

One night, when it was time,
we placed Air’s homemade
super kiss bookmark at
chapter’s end.

She climbed up to her bed
built over drawers and low closet.
A guardian angel looked down
from the low ceiling,
and glow-in-the-dark stars absorbed light
for their upcoming performance.

I nestled my face in her neck, breathed her scent,
nibbled a kiss good night.
Now she would announce
her last observations on the day.

My teacher says we have to be careful
about grownups. Lots of times that
even means grownups in our family.

Our eyes met.
The dark grew close.
Yes, Ariel, that’s right. But you can
trust me to care for you all the days
of your life.

Twenty years later,
Ariel can’t remember this exchange.

And that is how one night
she and I saved
our world for
good.

This poem, about a significant event that happened with my daughter twenty years ago, speaks for itself, I think. I’d been meaning to write it for a long time. Finally, along came an event that prompted me to do so. I was asked to read at the local library as part of an event (organized by my friend, Neil Baker) honoring the work of William Stafford. Pick a favorite Stafford poem and one of my own, was the request. “Tucking in Ariel” is my selection. Here (of my many favorites) is my Stafford selection:

With Kit, Age 7, At The Beach

We would climb the highest dune,
from there to gaze and come down:
the ocean was performing;
we contributed our climb.

Waves leapfrogged and came
straight out of the storm.
What should our gaze mean?
Kit waited for me to decide.

Standing on such a hill,
what would you tell your child?
That was an absolute vista.
Those waves raced far, and cold.

“How far could you swim, Daddy,
in such a storm?”
“As far as was needed,” I said,
and as I talked, I swam.

Damn. William Stafford. Robert Bly once said this is one of the greatest poems about parenting ever written. And Michael Meade wrote of it, “The child needs to hear an emotional truth spoken…how far does my father’s heart reach out into the world?…Her question pulls him into the wave-torn sea. In that moment he knows the answer in his heart: As far as was needed. The blessing is partly in the father’s capacity to hear the real question, partly in the heart-willingness of the answer.”