August 7 - 13th

August 7, 2005

The bad headache that plagued me all day yesterday—the result, I think, of two nearly sleepless nights in a hotel and lots of driving—has finally gone away. I think I just needed a good night’s rest. Thankfully, the bears stayed away and so Gus didn’t wake me up with any barking. I think I’m so used to the quiet out here that when I stay in a hotel the sound of the air conditioner (a necessity) keeps me up. I never get a good night’s sleep in town.

It was dreadfully hot again (105) when I got back, but I survived. Cindy Thompsen called in the afternoon. I’d hoped to meet up with her and her siblings as they were passing through the area, but we didn’t plan well, and having already driven all the way back here and feeling lousy, I wasn’t up for making the drive out again. They didn’t seem keen on driving the rental car over the bad roads to visit me out here, and I don’t blame them. It’s just as well; I would have been a bad host as debilitated as I was by the whopping headache.

With a clearer head and cool morning breezes, I finished up this poem, a terza rima:

Pit Viper


It comes to me in the night through the grass
of dreams, a living ribbon curled to strike,
guarding some next strange and shifting trespass—

a thing I’ve done or haven’t but would like.
No rattle I recall, no sound at all,
no hissing invitation to its bite.

But a foot will fall where a foot will fall
and might will come what might. Thus the two-pronged
knife, the mind-gall, the choice, the wherewithal

sleep affords the sleeper when all along
he’s walked so blindly through his life. A prick
before I see it, like stepping on thorns,

and then the blooming at my feet, the quick,
the chill as if from an open window
in a familiar room, the steady tick

of seconds counted. And they do not slow.
I’m poisoned simply knowing what I know.


It’s going to be hot again, so we’re heading to the river for the afternoon, where I’ll spend some more time with Woody Guthrie in Joe Klein’s book.

The river was lovely, as usual. Cool, clean, green water and our nice sandy beach. Quite a few rafters floated by, and I tried to find out more about the fire downriver. Last night, listening in on the party line, I was able to gather that the fire exploded over the last couple of days. The folks at Marial Lodge sounded worried. There was talk of back-burning, evacuation plans, and closing down the river to rafters. Some of today’s folks said they heard the river might be closed to rafting as early as tomorrow. I tried to check the Forestry Department web page about the fire while in town yesterday, but the page hadn’t been updated since July 29th. The fire’s been burning now for about 15 days. I’m going to keep trying to listen in and gather whatever info I can, and I’ll call the fire dispatcher tomorrow to get the scoop from there. I wish I could just call down to Marial Lodge, but the way this radio phone works you can’t call anyone else on the party line. I don’t know what will happen if I have to evacuate. Will I just head home? I can’t afford to stay in a hotel for any extended length of time. But I doubt it’ll come to that.

I called Sharen tonight to hear how the Newport Folk Festival was, and she was sitting on Newport Beach with the Subins. They’d just eaten at Flo’s Clamshack. I was most envious.


August 8, 2005

Last night I was all set to get in bed and read, and then I took Gus out for a pee and saw the stars! There was no moon, and they were thick, the Milky Way all nebulous and beautiful, so I decided to brave the mosquitoes and lie in the hammock for a while and watch for meteors. No sooner had I settled in than a huge one shot across the sky. Then another. Then another. In the half-hour or so that I lay there I saw five, all of them leaving long, fleeting trails. It was magical. And I don’t think I got a single mosquito bite. This may become a nightly routine. I got this poem out of it:

Meteors in a Remote Place


Here night is night; there is no man-made light
but for satellites which like runaway
stars could pass for planes in the Milky Way’s
otherwise unchanged arrangement. Tonight,
wrapped in the hammock on the open deck,
I brave mosquitoes for the meteors’
white-blue-orange trails that flash across
the northeastern sky and just as quickly
extinguish. Hard to think they’re just debris—
space dust, pebbles, peas—down here where crickets
sing, a mule deer chomps at the apple tree,
and my dog romps in his sleep beneath me.
As small as we all are, I, too, should shut
my eyes and let the black close over me.

Well, I called the fire dispatcher, who took down my information and said someone would be calling me. I also contacted Bradley to see if he had any news on the fire from the Internet. He said the fire is 20% contained and has burned about 2,100 acres, and that the ODF has been doing all it can to get a handle on it. He asked if I’d seen any smoke in the canyon, and I said no, and it turns out I spoke too soon. Late this afternoon the wind shifted and now the whole place is thick with smoke. I can hardly see Rattlesnake Ridge. The smoke’s irritating my eyes and my lungs, but my hope is that, like the last time it got smoky, the wind will shift again and clear it out. I just got a call back from the person the fire dispatcher contacted. He took down my coordinates and said he’d have someone on the firefighting team call me tonight. It’s good that I’m letting people know I’m out here just in case.


August 9, 2005

When I got up around 7:00 the smoke had dispersed quite a bit. There’s still a smoky haze in front of Rattlesnake Ridge and down over the river, but the air is a bit more breathable. The guy from the firefighting team called me last night, and gave me the scoop. He said the fire’s three miles from me, and that if it started to head my way he’d call. He sounded confident that it won’t, and said the smoke I was seeing was likely from the back-burning they did yesterday.

This morning I wrote and recorded a song for my good friend Jim Dowling. Jim’s got a fatal cancer, and doesn’t have long to live, a dreadful and sad fact we talk about pretty candidly. He and I have been friends for about fifteen years and have had many good times together. The song is a carpe diem (seize the day) sort of song as well as a tribute to our friendship. Hang in there, pal!
Gone for Good

The wind kicked up again in the afternoon, and the smoke came pouring back into the canyon, irritating my eyes and my throat. I tried closing the windows of the cabin, but the place got too hot. It’s hard to capture it in a photograph, so below I have an older shot of Rattlesnake Ridge on a clear day and then a shot from yesterday afternoon to try to give a sense of how smoky it is:


I’m looking forward to getting out of here for the weekend and going to a place where I can breathe!

August 10, 2005

Well, with the smoke working its way into the cabin, my clothes, my hair, my eyes, it seemed only apt that it work its way into a poem, too:

The Dry Season


A fire, sparked by lightning, has invaded
this green wilderness, clouded all vision.
My eyes sting for a thing I haven’t done.
Although I cannot see the charred acres

from here, I imagine the refugees—
mammals and birds and reptiles and insects,
a menagerie not unlike the ark’s.
But what of those creatures too slow to flee—

the beetles and snails, for example?
They’ll be the casualties of God’s wild whim,
like the ones last time round who couldn’t swim.
Mere miles away trees burn like temples

and orange teeth march in a crooked line.
Through tiny eyes gaze down on either scene’s
aftermath—a ship upon a mountain,
a bear clinging to the top of a pine.


August 12, 2005

I got a call on Wednesday from a reporter for the Bend newspaper, who’s doing a story about me for Saturday’s edition in advance of my reading there on Sunday. I’m guessing this is Judy’s doing. It was a pleasant surprise, and I’ll be curious to see what he writes. He’d seen the blog already, and so had a pretty good idea of what I’m doing with my residency. At one point he asked if it’s helped having my dog here. Apparently he noticed my huge attachment to Guster. Anyway, I hope the article drums up a good audience for the reading.

I also got a call from Bradley last night, and he said the fire blew up a bit on Thursday. Starting tomorrow the river will be closed to rafters and the river trail closed to hikers. The fire’s now burned about 3,700 acres (I think that was the figure he gave me), but he said it would have to cross creeks and a road to get here, and that the firefighters will have set up significant lines along the road going to Marial. So it’s unlikely I’ll have to evacuate.

We spent yesterday afternoon down at the river, where at one point I looked up and saw a bear on the other side. This is probably one I haven’t seen previously. I watched him for a while and Gus didn’t catch a whiff of him and so was oblivious. But then it looked as if the bear might climb into the river upstream of me, and I was afraid he’d cross right to us, so I gave a shout. That set Gus off. He went bolting upstream and yelping wildly. Then I was afraid he’d try to cross the river to get at the bear, but he didn’t. The bear finally ambled off and Gus returned to the beach and curled up in the shade of the umbrella.

There was a nice crescent moon rising last night, and the sky above the forest looked kind of purplish-blue. Not sure the photo does it justice, but here it is:


I finished the Woody Guthrie book last night, and had a hard time reading through the tears it brought on at the end. Poor Woody never had a chance against the Huntington’s chorea passed down by his mother, and he suffered a lot at the end. Joe Klein did a great job of bringing Woody to life, and he looms large in my mind now as an important American, like Walt Whitman. It was touching to read about Bob Dylan seeking out Woody at the hospital and playing for him. Woody called him “the kid.”

Now I’m reading Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which Neil left here for me. I’m liking it so far. Holly Golightly reminds me so much of Lori Brum, Sharen’s friend and neighbor when she was growing up.

Finished a couple more new poems. I’m not sure where this first one came from; maybe I’m feeling regrets about the way my life has turned out; maybe reading about Woody’s slew of kids dredged this one up.

Childless in a World of Children


Here comes the moon moving like a lantern
through the trees, and on the canyon’s far side
a pulled shade. Out of all the taciturn
evenings there are these somehow dignified

silent times through which the unborn voices
climb like half-remembered songs I would sing
in small rooms. I am doomed by the choices
I have made. My knees swing lighter lacking

riders, my shoulders slouch beneath the weight
of what they have not carried. My story’s
devoid of characters, and it’s too late
to revise. The moon’s my repertory

now. I watch it, however much dismayed,
playing the same scene it has always played—
a hermit walking home through a dark glade.
I am doomed by the choices I have made.


This next one was inspired by the sorry-looking apples I picked yesterday. Though they look unsightly, they’re actually pretty delicious. I tried to play around in this poem with a strange predominant meter: trochaic tetrameter catalectic. In layman’s terms trochaic means that there’s a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. Tetrameter means that there are four feet. Catalectic means that the final foot is incomplete (just the stressed syllable; the unstressed is left out). This structure works (for the most part) through each of the three longer lines that start each stanza. The short concluding line of each stanza uses a three-syllable line, usually an unstressed followed by two stressed syllables. Why this structure? Well, trochaic rhythms, unlike iambic rhythms, are a bit unsettling, and so they seemed to match the imagery and tone of the poem. Maybe it’s all too technical for the poem’s own good, but I think it works. I say “for the most part” above, because at times I vary the pattern a bit. For example, in the first line the word “Cancerous” should be pronounced as a two-syllable word—“Can-srus” rather than “Can-ser-us”—to achieve the desired effect. Of course, you can read it as a three-syllable word, too, and it’s simply a slight variation of the meter. If you were to scan line 7 you might find the meter a bit mucky in the second foot. Same with the first few feet of line 10. But it doesn’t really matter. My feeling about meter is that a little variation is to be desired. Now that I’ve said all this, I’ve probably spoiled the poem for you, as you’ll be counting as you go. Forget everything I said, and just read it.

Summer Apples


Cancerous danglers, homes for worms.
Some of them afflicted down
their embarrassed longitudes
with gray scars.

Others fallen, already
softened, sweet and crawling all
over with so many bees
and black flies.

But the ones I keep in bowls—
conspicuously flawed, these
sad and spotted bodies—call
to mind now

relatives of mine long dead:
faces powered, rouged and veined;
houses left empty and fruit
still set out.

“Where do they go?” I asked once
of my sister. We were slicing up
granpa’s apples, crosswise, for
their brown stars.

And before they dried where we’d lined
them on windowsills, I knew.
Some of them held seeds and that’s
how trees grew.

A bear was in the blackberries again this morning. I didn’t see the cub, but it looked a lot like mama bear. Maybe the cub was off apace also munching away. I don’t know how the bears can stand to walk through the thorns of those bushes. I slice up my fingers just picking a few berries.


The reporter from the Bend paper called again this afternoon to ask if he could use an excerpt from my poem “One Day in July” in his article. Of course I said yes. I’m glad he chose that poem. It’s one of my favorites of all the poems I’ve written out here. He said he’s including a photo of me, too, the black-and-white one that’s on the web. It’s ten years old, but whatever! It’s fun to get some press.

August 13th, 2005

The drive up to Bend was beautifully scenic, snaking along the Umpqua River and up into the Oregon High Desert. Judy and Phil have a lovely home, and they're the nicest people! Bend is a funky little town. I could live here! I saw the article on me in The Bulletin (including a huge photo of me and an excerpt from "One Day in July"), but I haven't read the article yet. Judy and Phil dropped me in town here for WiFi and a taste of the place while they doggy sit Guster.

I'm glad to be here.

Had a nice dinner with Judy and Phil, spicy porkchops, potato salad, and some of the tomatoes from my garden I'd brought as a little present, the latter done up with basil and balsamic vinegar. Good coffee and a tasty orangey dessert, too. It was nice not to eat alone, especially joined by easygoing, smart, engaging people. Good action!

It's late, and I had a long day. Signing off.