Melville

[Each piece of driftwood carries endless miles of stories silenced only by a seeming dalliance of a lingering within some vaguely defined final stages of disappearance...  But deep within many of them (the wood, the drifting, the dalliances, or maybe those final stages of disappearance) there are still surprising depths of solidity...]

Melville: I wanted to find a certain woman.

H: Woman you say?

Melville: I suppose.

H: When the silence of a word is broken, it becomes an idol upon which terror can lay claim...

Melville: (remains silent)

H: Wanted?

Melville: Well, yes, or else had wanted.

H: And now?

Melville: A sort of complaint against the trail system.

H: Ha!  That’s a good one.  But you know, nothing can be done about that, it has been the same way for years, a product of spontaneous non-planning.

Melville: So what about maps?

H: Well, have it your way but it’s just as well to forget about it and just pay attention to the direction instead of trying to figure out one’s particular placement...

Melville: I do though continue trying to reach the shore...

H: A certain woman, you say?

Melville: Well, I had...

H: And now?

Melville: The shore.

H:  You know everyone’s talking.  Someone got lost not far from the great bull kelp knot, and I know that you have been out there watching the signs and seeing the currents change...

Melville: (remains silent)

Lilly

[Sycamore has a feeling of blood in my veins, the steady pounding rhythm of our hearts moving with light and life]

Lilly was a little girl with colors in her soul

Lilly was a little girl who would brush the folds

Of her long hair

You see she really did care

That it didn’t just knot up everywhere

She would pick up her brush and without any fuss begin

Lilly’s sense of color carried out to everything around her

To everything she thought about

The birds all flew around as if

They themselves were rainbows

Raven Woman and Halfmoon Man

[I have always felt that New England Hornbeam has an essence of crow, raven, a mysterious power...  Something about the promise of its solidity even as the movement of its grain can be so effervescent, like its promise is distracted, a glance elsewhere...]

Raven Woman echoed joyous laughter

One Christmas eve morning when her journey began

When she sauntered off to go look after

The fate of the Halfmoon Man

Raven Woman became so fragile and yet so subtly strong

She enfolded her wings around the whisper of a song

In her eyes a sadness like honey ran

As she flew to the island of the Halfmoon Man

Halfmoon Man was halfway living

Halfmoon happy and halfmoon sad

Halfmoon taking and halfmoon giving

Halfmoon sane and halfmoon mad

Raven Woman found the distant shore

Where Halfmoon Man was half asleep

Half awake he smelled the odor

Of her sadness, rich and sweet and deep

What was it that Raven Woman wanted

Mere skin and bones for her frying pan?

A souvenir of the land she’d haunted?

Or maybe the soul of the Halfmoon Man?

Halfmoon Man saw a woman appearing

And said, ”I was just resting here dreaming of you.

I got some private space I’ve been clearing

And I know what it is that we need to do.”

We have to hunt and seek and gather

All the joys and ease and restful bliss

Of everything around that only half matters

Everything someone else might only half miss.”

It’s the only way that I can halfway see

A way that’s worthwhile and meaningful too

A way to get back to some simplicity

How does that all sound to you?”

Raven Woman looked Halfmoon Man in the eye

She saw the same sadness that she had in her own

She saw the same truth and the same age-old lie

Saw honesty and goodness etched to the bone

She said, “The world’s like a book that’s halfway read

It’s like a language that’s only been half thought out

It’s like a baby that’s only been halfway fed

I think that you know what I’m talking about...”

Halfmoon Man was silent then but she heard him speak

A beautiful voice she guardedly thought

And she had a feeling, obscure and weak

That his space was the same space that she sought

She remembered one cold winter’s morning

Northern lights dancing in the sky

When she had met the other half of Halfmoon Man just dawning

Like a magical dream trying to pass her by

Or had it been on a midsummer’s eve?

A halfmoon’s birth dim in the midnight sun?

whispering of trust and of things to believe

and of things necessary being said and done?

But she’d known even then that he would never be hers

He would always be like a halfmoon child

It would be her joy and a little like a curse

To love a man who was halfmoon wild

The half he was she always knew

The half that was leaving towards the new moon deep

The half that wandered, the half that flew

The half that no one ever would keep

Just like herself in her own halfmoon world

Her joy and her freedom with wings wide unfurled

Her power and joy in the world as it is

And likewise she knew she would never be his

They entwined in the knowledge that half would be half

And the blackness of Raven filled with a laugh

Of wonder and calmness and confusion and glee

And the magic of letting it all be set free

And the Halfmoon Man smiled at her laughter

And Raven Woman didn’t even have to say

“you and I know what we are both after”

And she turned to the sunrise and just flew away

And as she flew away she smiled

At what Halfmoon Man had finally given to her

He hadn’t even needed to be tricked or beguiled

To let her feel peaceful and calm and secure...

And when she’d gone Halfmoon Man just lay there

Nothing to do but just linger and stare

He half stared and half squinted at the sky above

And wondered if somewhere there was something like love

He wondered of how life always took its own toll

As he wondered if two halves could ever be whole

He wondered until the day became late

And he thought it was time to move along with his fate

To be Halfmoon Man always waxing or waning

But never with a moment’s thought of complaining

He thought of his simplicity stupidity and blindness

And thought of the woman who had accepted his kindness

Who had allowed him to give her a part of his dreams

Nothing is really as simple as it seems

At that moment he felt almost as good as complete

In another world Raven looked for something to eat

Sometimes the Clouds Can Only Rise So High

[This spoon is made from beech.  The grain-wrought patterns have me think of flight, flow, beauty at heights...]

I had gathered words

for a fire that I thought

I would never build,

they have rested

high up on a ledge

overlooking an eternity

you know,

like a beacon, some envision

a siren call never to be heard, some hear.

Most days I build my fires the normal way:

on the coldest of days,

in the middle of nowhere,

out where they’re most necessary

as if necessity is all

that has us yearn

for a pair of warm hands

And then,

As if to reawaken that one time

When we had rested

like shoelaces, broken on stray shoes lying in cardboard boxes

Next to books

Of long useless addresses,

All those words dangle

upon one more edge,

of one more eternity to watch each other jump

without even saying goodbye, just like that,

each as owls lashing at their fall

in trust,

catching it, and flying

well beyond any simple yearning

for edges, ends, the world, enough,

they shoot past so many

various mountaintops

that ledge seen far below

as if as an assurance

as you glance towards where I once was.

Nestled in my dreams

I hear the sheets move, I feel the moon slide beyond the lingering night there is a pause when I feel

you still look at me (for me) when you let go of my hand when we know, together, all the secrets that would never dare be entrusted to us even as winds rush by a hint, a caress, a pull, you

Who planted passion

Like onion seeds, emerge now within that torn earth of flight like

a fire to be scattered like pine needles along

A muddy path lost in fog yet leading towards the sun

Picking Nails

A leaning stack

of an old building’s lingering,

I believed love

was only

picking nails from the stove grate;

but you

were solstice

fire

hammering two by fours

to the air.

Teak's Way (3)

Teak is beautiful wood to work with - able to accept a knife blade with grace, and offer the subtlest of suggestions of how to move upon its surfaces...

Teak's Way (2)

When I placed the knife blade against the wood, I went back in time...  I was siting by a river.   There was a piece of wood that was floating by and I scooped it out of the languidly flowing water.  Nothing was moving fast that day.  There was a lull to all of existance.

The piece of wood - a branch about wrist-thick - did not seem to have been in the water for long.  It seemed like it was green wood - wood that had not been away from its tree for very long.  Its end was of a wind-shorn sort of rip of strands.  I imagined the wind storm in the past night's darkness, and envisioned the branch straining to maintain itself against the pull of swind.  Maybe a larger branch had fallen upon it.

I looked closer.  Yes, there was a rip upon the bark, like something had been dashed upn it, maybe as it hit the ground, maybe to induce it to break and fall.  I felt like I could walk upstream and find the tree that it had been ripped from.

I moved the knife blade against the teak.  When I had mentioned to friends that I had gotten a piece of teak, they asked if it was actual teak - maybe it was acacia, they ventured.  But I had explored it and had come to the conclusion that it was actual teak.  Fine-grained, oily, smelling of leather.  The knife dug through some first initial grain, and like most times, I felt the blade warm to the wood, like it needed to gauge the wood for a few cuts before settling upon the texture of the rhythm - a texture of slow yet solid growth amidst a spectrum of seasons.  I felt like I could begin to see the tree.  What a majestic tree it must have been.

And I felt like I could begin to see a spoon.